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The Mountain Divide

by Frank H. Spearman · English · Gutenberg #29656 · 333,234 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Mountain Divide

Author: Frank H. Spearman

Illustrator: Armand Both


        
Release date: August 10, 2009 [eBook #29656]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29656

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE




BOOKS BY FRANK H. SPEARMAN

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  ROBERT KIMBERLY. Illustrated by James
    Montgomery Flagg. 12mo                           Net $1.30

  WHISPERING SMITH. A Story of Rocky Mountain
    Life. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. 12mo               $1.50

  THE DAUGHTER OF A MAGNATE. Illustrated. 12mo           $1.50

  DOCTOR BRYSON. A Novel. 12mo                           $1.50

  THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE. Illustrated. 12mo             Net $1.25

  THE STRATEGY OF GREAT RAILROADS.
    With Maps. 12mo                                  Net $1.50




[Illustration: AS BUCK'S STRAINING EYE FOLLOWED THE MOVEMENT, THE SECOND
INDIAN STRUCK THE CLUB DOWN.]




THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE

BY

FRANK H. SPEARMAN

ILLUSTRATED BY

ARMAND BOTH

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK :: 1912




Copyright, 1912, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published September, 1912




THIS STORY WITHOUT LOVE,

IS NONE THE LESS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED

TO

MY YOUNGEST SON

ARTHUR DUNNING SPEARMAN




ILLUSTRATIONS

  As Buck's straining eye followed the movement, the
      second Indian struck the club down.               _Frontispiece_
  It was only after a moment that the lineman could be
      seen to gain.                                                 92
  "Let that gate alone or I'll brain you," he cried.               250
  For Scott to draw and fire was but one movement.                 300




THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE


CHAPTER I


Night had fallen and a warm rain drifting down from the mountains hung
in a mist over the railroad yards and obscured the lights of Medicine
Bend. Two men dismounting from their drooping horses at the foot of
Front Street threw the reins to a man in waiting and made their way on
foot across the muddy square to the building which served the new
railroad as a station and as division head-quarters. In Medicine Bend,
the town, the railroad, everything was new; and the broad, low pine
building which they entered had not yet been painted.

The public waiting-room was large, roughly framed, and lighted with
hanging kerosene lamps. Within the room a door communicated with the
agent's office, and this was divided by a wooden railing into a
freight office and a ticket and telegraph office.

It could be seen, as the two men paused at the door of the inner room,
that the first wore a military fatigue-cap, and his alert carriage as
he threw open his cape-coat indicated the bearing of an American army
officer. He was of medium height, and his features and eyes implied
that the storms and winds of the plains and mountains were familiar
friends. This was Park Stanley, charged at that time with the
construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

The agent's office, which he and his companion now looked into, was
half-filled with a crowd of frontiersmen, smoking, talking, disputing,
asking questions, and crowding against the fence that railed off the
private end of the room; while at the operator's table next to the
platform window a tall, spindling boy was trying in the confusion
behind him to get a message off the wire.

Stanley, eying the lad, noticed how thin his face was and what a bony
frame spread out under the roundabout jacket that he appeared already
to have outgrown. And he concluded this must be the new operator,
Bucks, who for some days had been expected from the East.

The receiver clicked insistently and Bucks endeavored to follow the
message, but the babel of talking made it almost impossible. Stanley
heard the boy appeal more than once for less noise, but his appeals
were unheeded. He saw symptoms of fire in the operator's eyes as the
latter glared occasionally at the crowd behind him, but for what
followed even Stanley was unprepared. Bucks threw down his pen and
coming forward with angry impatience ordered the crowd out of the
room.

He pushed the foremost of the intruders back from the rail and
followed up his commands by opening the wicket gate and driving those
ahead of him toward the door of the waiting-room. "Get out where you
belong," he repeated, urging the crowd on. Stanley turned to the man
at his side. "I will go upstairs to write my message. This must be the
new boy, Bob," he added; "he acts as if he might make things go."

His companion, Bob Scott, smiled as he followed Stanley out upon the
platform and up the narrow stairway leading to the division offices.
But Bob Scott was conservative. He never spoke above an undertone and
naturally took the conservative side: "If he only doesn't make them go
too fast, Colonel," was his comment.

A tall young man, spare but almost gigantic in stature, standing back
in one corner of the agent's office as the men about him were hustled
along, likewise regarded Bucks with surprise as he saw him start
single-handed to expel the intruders. This was the mountain telegraph
lineman, Bill Dancing, as simple as he was strong, and ready at any
time to be surprised, but not often disconcerted. In this instance,
however, he was amazed, for almost before he realized it the energetic
operator was hustling him out with the others.

When Bucks thought the room cleared he turned to go back to his table,
but he saw that one man had been overlooked. This man was still
sitting on a stool in the farthest corner of the dimly lighted room.
The spindling operator without hesitation walked over to him and laid
his hand on the man's shoulder. Dancing, looking back through the
door, held his breath.

"Move out of here, please," said Bucks, "into the public waiting-room."
The man rose with the utmost politeness. "Sorry to be in your way,"
he returned mildly, though there was a note not quite pleasant in his
voice.

"Your place is outside," continued the operator. "I can't do anything
with a mob in here all talking at once."

"I haven't done my talking yet," suggested the man, with a shade of
significance. This, however, was lost on Bucks, who looked sharply at
the stool from which the man had risen.

"I think this stool is mine," said he, picking it up and examining it.
"It is mine," he added, after a moment's inspection. "Please move
on."

"Perhaps before I go," returned the man with the same unpleasant
irony, "you will tell me whether you have an express package here for
Harvey Levake."

"Of course I will, Harvey," responded the operator in a matter-of-fact
way. "Just wait a minute."

Levake's lips stretched into a ghost of a smile, and his white-lashed
gray eyes contracted with an effort at amiability.

The operator, going inside the railing, ran over the express way-bills
which, not yet entered up, lay on the freight desk.

"There is a package here for you," he announced a moment later, and
turning to a heap of parcels thrown under the desk he searched among
them until he found and produced the one he sought.

"Here it is--a box of cartridges."

"What are the charges?" asked the man.

"Four dollars and sixty cents."

The man laid down a twenty-dollar bank-bill. The operator hesitated:
"I haven't the change."

Levake showed no sympathy: "That is not my fault," he returned.

The operator looked at him: "Do you want the package to-night?"

"If I didn't, do you suppose I would waste an hour here waiting for
it?"

The boy considered a moment and made a decision, but it chanced to be
the wrong decision. "Take the package along. Bring me the charges in
the morning."

Levake made no response beyond a further glance at the boy somewhat
contemptuous; but he said nothing and picking up his package walked
out. No one opposed him. Indeed, had the operator been interested he
would have noticed with what marked alacrity every man, as he passed
through the waiting-room, got out of Levake's way. Dancing, standing
at the door and with his hair on end, awaited the close of the
incident. He now re-entered the inner office and shut the waiting-room
door behind him with an audible bang. Bucks, who had returned to his
table, looked around. "Well, who are you?" he demanded as he regarded
Dancing. "And what are you doing here?"

"Who are you?" retorted Dancing bluntly. "And what are you doing
here?"

"My name is Bucks and I am the new night operator."

"You look new. And you act all-fired new. My name is Bill Dancing and
I am the telegraph lineman."

"Why, you are the man I am looking for."

"So I thought, when you pushed me out of here with the rest of your
visitors."

"Why didn't you speak up, Bill?" demanded Bucks calmly.

A quizzical expression passed over Dancing's face. "I didn't want to
break the calm. When I see a man walking around a powder magazine I
hate to do anything that might set it off.

"So your name is Bucks," continued Dancing, as he walked through the
wicket and threw his wet hat among the way-bills on the freight desk.
"Well, Mr. Bucks, do you know what was most likely to happen to you
any minute before you got through with that crowd, just now?"

"No, I don't know. Why?" asked Bucks, busy with his messages.

"Have you ever seen a shooting mix-up in Medicine Bend?" demanded
Dancing in a tone of calculated indifference.

"No," answered Bucks in decided but off-hand manner, "I never saw a
shooting mix-up anywhere."

"Never got shot up just for fun?" persisted Dancing. "Do you know," he
continued without waiting for an answer, "who that polite man was,
the last one you shouldered out of here?" Dancing pointed as he
spoke to the corner from which Levake had risen, but the operator,
straightening out the papers before him, did not look around.

"No, Bill, I don't know anybody here. You see I am a stranger."

"I see you are a stranger," echoed Dancing. "Let me tell you
something, then, will you?"

"Tell it quick, Bill."

"There is no cemetery in this town."

"I have understood it is very healthy, Bill," returned the operator.

"Not for everybody." Bill Dancing paused to let the words sink in, as
his big eyes fixed upon the young operator's eyes. "Not for
everybody--sometimes not for strangers. Strangers have to get used to
it. There is a river here," added the lineman sententiously. "It's
pretty swift, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you have got to be careful how you do things out in this
country."

"But, Bill," persisted the lad, "if there is going to be any business
done in this office we have got to have order, haven't we?" The
lineman snorted and the operator saw that his appeal had fallen flat.
"My batteries, Bill," he added, changing the subject, "are no good at
all. I sent for you because I want you to go over them now, to-night,
and start me right. What are you going to do?"

Dancing had begun to poke at the ashes in the stove. "Build a fire,"
he returned, looking about for material. He gathered up what waste
paper was at hand, pushed it into the stove, and catching up the
way-bills from the desk, threw them in on the paper and began to feel
in his wet pockets for matches.

"Hold on," cried Bucks. "What do you mean? You must be crazy!" he
exclaimed, running to the stove and pulling the way-bills out.

"Not half so crazy as you are," replied Dancing undisturbed. "I'm only
trying to show you how crazy you are. Burning up way-bills isn't a
circumstance to what you did just now. You are the looniest operator I
ever saw." As he looked at Bucks he extended his finger impressively.
"When you laid your hand on that man's shoulder to-night--the one
sitting on your stool--I wouldn't have given ten cents for your
life."

Bucks regarded him with astonishment. "Why so?"

"He's the meanest man between here and Fort Bridger," asserted
Dancing. "He'd think no more of shooting you than I would of
scratching a match." Bucks stared at the comparison. "He is the worst
scoundrel in this country and partners with Seagrue and John Rebstock
in everything that's going on, and even they are afraid of him."

Dancing stopped for breath. "Talk about my making a fire out of
way-bills! When I saw you lay your hand on that man, I stopped
breathing--can't breathe just right yet," he muttered, pulling at his
shirt collar. "Do you know why you didn't get killed?"

"Why, no, Bill, not exactly," confessed Bucks in embarrassment.

"Because Levake was out of cartridges. I heard him tell Rebstock so
when they walked past me."

"Thank you for posting me. How should I know he was Seagrue's partner,
or who Rebstock is? Let's make a bargain. I will be more careful in
clearing out the office, and you be more careful about building fires.
There's wood in the baggage-room. I couldn't get out to get it for
fear the crowd would steal the tickets."

"Well, you are 'out' four dollars and sixty cents charges on the
cartridges," continued Dancing, "and you had better say nothing about
it. If you ever ask Levake for the money he will kill you."

Bucks looked rebellious. "It's only right for him to pay the charges.
I shall ask him for them the next time I see him. And what is more he
will have to pay, I don't care whose partner he is."

Dancing now regarded the operator with unconcealed impatience. "I
suppose there are more where you came from," he muttered. "They will
need a lot of them here, if they carry on like that. How old are you?"
he demanded of Bucks abruptly.

"Seventeen."

"How long have you been in this country?"

Bucks looked at the clock. "About five hours, Bill."

"Reckon time close, don't you?"

"Have to, Bill, in the railroad business."

Dancing reflected a moment. "Five hours," he repeated. "If you don't
get killed within the next five you may live to be a useful citizen of
Medicine Bend. Where are you from, and how did you happen to come away
out here on the plains?"

"I am from Pittsburgh. I had to quit school and go to work."

"Where did you go to school?"

"Well, I didn't go----"

"Quit before you went, did you?"

"I mean, I was preparing for Van Dyne College. One of my brothers
teaches there. I couldn't start there after I lost my father--he was
killed in the Wilderness Campaign, Bill. But when I can earn money
enough, I am going back to Van Dyne and take an engineering course."

"Got it all figured out, have you?"

"Then I heard they were building the Union Pacific, and I knew
something about telegraphing--Jim Foster and I had a line from the
house to the barn."

"Had a line from the house to the barn, eh?" chuckled Dancing.

"So I bought a railroad ticket to Des Moines from Pittsburgh and
staged it to Omaha, and General Park gave me a job right away and sent
me out on the first train to take this office, nights. I didn't even
know where Medicine Bend was."

"Don't believe you know yet. Now that's right, I don't believe you
know yet. You're a good boy, but you talk too much."

"How old are you, Bill?"

"I am twenty."

"Twenty!" echoed Bucks, as if that were not very much, either.

"Twenty!" repeated the lineman. "But," he added, drawing himself up in
his tremendous stature, with dignity, "I have been on the plains
driving wagons and building telegraph lines for seven years----"

"Seven years!" echoed Bucks, now genuinely admiring his companion.

"My father was a Forty-niner. I was a line foreman when I was
seventeen, for Edward Creighton, and we put the first telegraph line
through from the Missouri River to the Pacific," continued Dancing,
ready to back his words with blows if necessary.

"You _are_ an old-timer," cried Bucks enviously. "Any good rabbit-shooting
around here, Bill?"

"Rabbit-shooting?" echoed Dancing in scorn. "The only rabbits they
shoot around here, young fellow, are Pittsburgh rabbits, that
don't keep their ears hid proper. When we go hunting, we go
antelope-hunting, buffalo-hunting, grizzly-bear hunting, elk-hunting.
Now I don't say I don't like you and I don't say you won't do. What I
say is, you talk too much. I'll tell you what I've learned. I've
learned not to say too much at a time. And when I say it, I don't
say it very loud. And if you don't get killed, in advance, you will
learn the same thing in the same way I learned it. Where are your
blamed batteries?"

"Bill, you are all right."

"I am, am I?"

"First help me enter these way-bills and check up the express packages
so I can deliver them to this mob."

"My business isn't checking up express; but I like you, young fellow,
so, go ahead. Only you talk too much."

"Just a moment!"

At these words coming from the other end of the office, the lineman
and the operator looked around. The military-looking man and his
companion had entered the room unobserved and stood at the
counter listening to the colloquy between the Eastern boy and the
plainsman--for neither of the two were more than boys. Dancing
saluted the new-comers. "It's Colonel Stanley and Bob Scott," he
exclaimed.

Bucks walked forward. Stanley handed him a message. "You are the night
operator? Here is a despatch for General Park. Get it out for me right
away, will you?"

Dancing came forward to the railing. "How are you, Bill?" said
Stanley, greeting the lineman as Bucks read the long message. "I am
going up into the mountains next week, and I am just asking General
Park for a cavalry detail."

"Going to need me, Colonel?"

"Better hold yourself ready. Can you read that, young man?" he asked,
speaking to Bucks.

"Yes, sir."

"Lose no time in getting it off."

With the words he turned on his heel and leaving the office went
upstairs to the despatcher's rooms. During the interval that the
message was being sent, Dancing worked at the express matter. While
the two were busy, Bob Scott, moving so quietly that he disturbed no
one, laid carefully upon the smouldering paper in the stove such chips
as he could pick from the wood-box, nursing and developing a little
blaze until, without noise or fuss, he soon had a good fire going. In
all of the mountain country there was but one kind of men who built
fires in that way and these were Indians.

Such was Bob Scott, who, wet to the skin from his ride down the hills
with Stanley, now stood slowly drying himself and watching Dancing and
the new operator.

Scott was a half-blood Chippewa Indian, silent as a mountain night and
as patient as time. He served Colonel Stanley as guide and scout
wherever the railroad man rode upon his surveys or reconnoissances.
Dancing, emerging presently from the batteries, greeted Scott again,
this time boisterously. The Indian only smiled, but his face reflected
the warmth of his friendship for the big lineman. And at this juncture
Dancing, slapping him on the shoulder, turned to introduce him to
Bucks. The three stood and talked a moment together, though, perhaps,
without realizing what they were almost at once to go through
together. The outgoing Eastern passenger train now pulled up to the
platform and Bucks was kept busy for some time selling tickets.

His buyers were all sorts and conditions of men. And one forlorn-looking
woman, with a babe in her arms and a little girl clinging to her
skirt, asked the price of a ticket to Omaha. When told, she turned away
to count her money. Among the men were traders and frontiersmen
going to Missouri River markets with buffalo robes; trappers from the
Big Horn country with furs; Mormon elders on their way from Utah to
their Eastern settlements; soldiers on furlough and men from the
railroad-construction camps on the front; adventurers, disgusted with
the hardships of frontier life, and gamblers and desperadoes,
restless and always moving.

Bucks needed his wits to watch the money that was pushed under his
little wicket and to make change without mistake. There was elbowing
and contention and bad language, but the troublesome crowd was
finally disposed of, and when the last of the line had left the ticket
window the waiting-room was pretty well cleared. There remained only a
black-bearded man half-asleep in a chair by the stove, and in one
corner on a bench the woman, who was trying to quiet the child she
held in her lap.




CHAPTER II


As Bucks looked through his embrasure to see if all had been served,
his eye fell on the group in the corner and he heard the woman
suppressing the sobbing of her little girl. He walked out into the
waiting-room to ask what the trouble was. He learned afterward that
she was the wife of a gambler, but she told him only that she had
followed her husband to Medicine Bend and was now trying to get back
with her two children to her parents in Iowa. When she had ascertained
the price of the railroad ticket she found that she lacked five
dollars of the sum needed to make up the fare. Bucks had just a little
money of his own, but he had counted on using that for his meals.
While he was debating what to do, the elder child tugging still at the
mother's dress asked for something to eat, and while the mother tried
to quiet it Bucks felt he could manage somehow without the price of
the ticket better than this woman could.

"Give me what money you have," he said. "I will get you a ticket."

"But isn't the train gone?"

"No."

The black-bearded man dozing near the stove had his ears open although
his eyes were closed. He had heard fragments of the talk and saw the
boy dig into his own pocket, as he would have expressed it, to start
the woman home. After Bucks had given her the ticket and she was
trying to thank him and to quiet again the tired child, the drowsy man
rose, picked up the woman's hand-bag and told her gruffly he would put
her on the train. As he started with her out into the drizzling rain,
he carried her little girl, and, stopping down the platform at a
sheltered lunch-counter, he bought a bag of doughnuts big enough to
sink a ship. He offered no money to the man at the counter, but his
credit seemed unquestioned. In the train the seats appeared all to be
taken, but the drowsy man again showed his authority by rolling a
tipsy fellow out of a seat and piling him up in a corner near the
stove--which fortunately had no fire in it.

During all this time he had not said a word. But at the last, having
placed the woman and the children in two seats and made them
comfortable, he asked the mother one question--her husband's name. She
told him, and, without any comment or good-bys, he left the car and
started through the rain uptown.

After the train pulled out, the wind shifted and the rain changed
into a snow which, driven from the mountains, thickened on the wet
window in front of the operator's table. A message came for the
night yardmaster, and the operator, seeing the head-light of the
switch-engine which was working close by, put on his cap and stepped
out to deliver the message. As he opened the waiting-room door, a man
confronted him--the bearded man who had taken the woman and children
to the train. Bucks saw under the visor of a cloth cap, a straight
white nose, a dark eye piercingly keen, and a rather long, glossy,
black beard. It was the passenger conductor, David Hawk. Without
speaking, Hawk held out his hand with a five-dollar bank note in it.

"What is this?" asked Bucks.

"The money you gave the woman."

Bucks, taking the bill, regarded his visitor with surprise. "Where did
you get this?"

"What's that to you?"

"But----"

"Don't ask questions," returned Hawk brusquely. "You've got your
money, haven't you?"

"Yes, but----"

"That's enough." And with Bucks staring at him, Hawk, without a word
or a smile, walked out of the station.

But Bill Dancing had seen the incident and was ready to answer Bucks's
question as he turned with the money in his hand. "That is Dave Hawk,"
explained Dancing. "Dave hates a sneak. The way he got the money from
the woman's husband was probably by telling him if he didn't pay for
his wife's ticket and add enough to feed her and her babies to the
river he would blow his head off. Dave doesn't explain things
especially."

Bucks put the money in his pocket and started on with his message. The
yards covered the wide flat along the river. Medicine Bend was then
the western operating point for the railroad and the distributing
point for all material used in the advancing construction through the
mountains.

Not until he left the shelter of the station building did he realize
the force of the storm that was now sweeping across the flat. The wind
had swung into the northwest and blew almost a gale and the snow stung
his face as he started across the dark yard. There were practically no
lights at all beyond the platform except those in the roundhouse, too
far away to be seen, but the operator saw the moving head-light of the
switch-engine and hastened across the slippery tracks toward it. The
crew were making up a material train to send west and the engine was
snorting and puffing among long strings of flat cars loaded with
rails, ties, stringers, and bridge timbers.

As Bucks neared the working engine it receded from him, and following
it up he soon found his feet slipping in the wet mud and the wind at
times taking his breath. Conscious of the folly of running farther, he
halted for a moment and turning his back to the storm resolved to wait
till the engine returned. He chose a spot under the lee of a box-car,
and was soon rewarded by hearing a new movement from the working
engine. By the increasing noise of the open cylinder cocks he
concluded it was backing toward him. He stepped across the nearest
track to reach a switch-stand, a car-length away, whence he thought he
could signal the engine with his lantern. He had nearly reached the
switch when his foot slipped from a rail into a frog that held him
fast. Holding his lantern down, he saw how he was caught and tried to
free his heel. It seemed as if it might easily be done, but the more
he worked the faster caught he found himself. For a moment he still
made sure he could loosen his foot. Even when he realized that this
was not easy, he felt no alarm until he heard the switch-engine
whistle. Through the driving snow he could see that it was coming
toward him, pushing ahead of it a lead of flat cars.

Bucks was no stranger to railroad yards even then, and the realization
of his peril flashed across his mind. He renewed his efforts to loosen
his imprisoned heel. They were useless. He stood caught in the iron
vice. A sweat of fear moistened his forehead. He hoped for an instant
that the moving cars were not coming on his track; but almost at once
he saw that they were being pushed toward the very switch he was
trying to reach. Even where he stood, struggling, he was not six feet
away from the switch-stand and safety. It seemed as if he could almost
reach it, as he writhed and twisted in his agony of apprehension.

He swung his lantern frantically, hoping to catch the eye of one of
the switching crew. But the only answer was the heavy pounding of the
loaded cars over the rail joints as they were pushed down upon the
helpless operator. Worst of all, while he was swinging his lantern
high in the air, the wind sucked the flame up into the globe and it
went out and left him helpless in the dark. Like the hare caught in
the steel teeth of a trap, the boy stood in the storm facing impending
death.

The bitterest feelings overwhelmed him. After coming hundreds of miles
and plunging into his work with the most complacent self-confidence,
he stood before the close of the first day about to be snuffed out of
existence as if he were no more than the flame of his useless lantern.
A cruel sense of pain oppressed his thoughts. Each second of
recollection seemed to cover the ground of years. The dull, heavy
jolting of the slow-coming cars shook the ground. He twisted and
writhed this way and that and cried out, knowing there were none to
hear him: the wind swept away his appeal upon its heedless wings; the
nearest car was almost upon him. Then a strange feeling of calm came
over him. He felt that death was knocking at his heart. Hope had gone,
and his lips were only moving in prayer, when a light flashed out of
the darkness at his very side and he felt himself seized as if by a
giant and wrenched away from where he stood and through the air.

He heard a quick exclamation, saw a lighted lantern fall to the
ground, felt a stinging pain in his right foot, and knew no more.

When he recovered consciousness, three lanterns shone in his eyes. He
was lying in the mud near the switch with the engine crew standing
over him. One of the men knelt at his side and he saw the thin, strong
features of a face he had seen among the railroad men, but one that he
knew then he was never to forget--the face of the yardmaster,
Callahan. Callahan knelt in the storm with a good-natured expression.
The men about the yardmaster were less kindly.

"Who are you, tar heels?" demanded the engineman angrily.

Resentment, which would have been quick in the operator a little
earlier, had died in the few moments in which he had faced death. He
answered only in the quietest way:

"I am the night operator."

"The deuce you are!" exclaimed the man bending over him.

"Who are you?" demanded the operator, in turn.

"I am Callahan, the night yardmaster."

"I have an order for you to send a car of spikes on No. 7, Callahan. I
was trying to find you when I got caught in the frog." The pain in his
foot overcame Bucks as he spoke. Another dread was in his mind and he
framed a question to which he dreaded to hear the answer. "Is my foot
gone?" he faltered.

The yardmaster hesitated a moment and turned to an older man at his
side wearing a heavy cap. "How about it, doctor?" he asked.

Doctor Arnold, the railway surgeon, a kindly but stern man, answered
briefly, "We won't take it off this time. But if he is that careless
again we will take his head off."

"How old are you, boy?" demanded Callahan.

"Seventeen."

"Well, your foot isn't hurt," he continued gruffly. "But it's only
God's mercy that I got here in time to pull you out of the frog."

The operator was already up. "I hope I shan't forget it," he said,
putting out his hand. "Will you remember the spikes?"

"I will," responded Callahan grimly. "And I guess----"

"Say it," said the operator gamely, as the yardmaster hesitated.

"I guess you will."




CHAPTER III


Bucks, after his eventful first night on duty, slept so heavily that
on the following afternoon he had only time to eat his supper, walk
haltingly up the main street of Medicine Bend and back to the square,
when it was time to relieve the day man at the station.

But the few minutes in the narrow business street filled him with
interest and at times with astonishment. Medicine Bend, still very
young, was a mushroom railroad town of frame store buildings hastily
thrown together, and houses, shanties, and tents. It was already
the largest and most important town between the mountains and the
Missouri River. The Union Pacific Railroad, now a double-tracked,
transcontinental highway, laid with ninety and one hundred pound
steel rails, and ballasted with disintegrated granite, a model of
railroad construction, equipment, and maintenance, was, after the
close of the Civil War, being pushed with light iron rails and heavy
gradients across what was then known to geographers as the Great
American Desert, and the project of a transcontinental railroad was
meant at that time to unite the chief port of the Pacific coast,
San Francisco, with the leading cities of the Atlantic seaboard.

A railroad in building across a country considers first the two
uttermost cities (its principal terminals), or those two portions of
the country which it seeks to connect for the interchange of traffic.

The Union Pacific and its companion road, the Central Pacific,
afforded, too, the first and last instance of the United States
Government's becoming responsible for the building of a railroad.
Although the project of aiding a railroad to be built somewhere
between and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean ports had been
discussed by Congress for thirty years before the fall of Fort Sumter,
the extraordinary feeling caused by the Civil War alone made possible
so unusual an undertaking. President Lincoln himself had given the
subject careful thought, and when, after much controversy and
discouraging political intrigue, the Union and Central Pacific
Railroad bills were ready to pass Congress, Abraham Lincoln was
appealed to to decide a long-standing controversy concerning the
gauge, or width of track, for the new lines.

After painstaking consideration, he decided on a gauge of five feet,
but the promoters of the line then persuaded Congress to reduce the
figures to four feet eight and one-half inches, and that gauge is now
the standard gauge for all American railroads. It would have been
better if the railroad builders had followed Lincoln's suggestion,
since the traffic of American railroads has outgrown the possibilities
of their gauges. And within a few years one of the greatest of
present-day railroad builders has declared with emphasis that a
six-foot gauge must one day come to provide our railroads with the
necessary facilities for handling the enormous and constantly
expanding volume of American railroad traffic.

The young operator, who, in spite of his efforts to conceal his hurt,
now limped a little as he walked up the street of the new railroad
town might well look with curiosity and amazement on what he saw. The
street he walked in was no more than a long assemblage of saloons,
restaurants, boarding-houses, gambling-houses, dance-halls and shops.
Nearer the station and fronting on the open square, there were
barber-shops and so-called hotels. Up and down the side streets he saw
livery-stables and roughly built warehouses for contractors' supplies,
army supplies, and stage-line depots.

The main street was alive with strange-looking frontiersmen, trappers,
hunters, scouts, soldiers, settlers, railroad laborers, outlaws,
prospectors, and miners. Every face that Bucks looked into presented a
study. They were sometimes faces bronzed with the clear, dry sunshine
of the plains and mountains, rugged with adventure and keen with
dangers met and passed, but others were furrowed with dissipation and
seamed with vice, or merely vacant with the curiosity of the
wanderer.

Nearly every man carried a fire-arm of some sort. Indians were a
continual menace upon the frontier to the north and west and on the
front where the road was being built; and in the train-service and
construction work railroad men usually went armed. Moreover, when the
frontiersmen were not arming against the Indians they were arming
against one another; it being difficult at times to tell whether the
white men or the savages were the more dangerous to the peaceful
pursuit of happiness. As Bucks, returning down Front Street, neared
the square that opened before the station a group of army officers
were walking across it. They were the first regular officers he had
ever seen and he regarded them with interest. At the station the chief
despatcher, Baxter, met him at the door. "Bucks, I've been waiting for
you. Can you ride a horse?"

Bucks smiled.

"Colonel Stanley," continued Baxter, "is going to the front to-night.
He wants to take an operator with him. Giddings isn't well enough to
go, but he can take your key to-night; you can go with the colonel
instead. He will take Dancing and a detail of cavalrymen with Leon
Sublette and Bob Scott for guides."

The suddenness of the call was not unpleasant. It was such continual
excitement and new adventure that Bucks liked and he said he was
ready. The despatcher told him to hunt up Bill Dancing, who would give
him the details.

Within an hour the cavalry horses were being loaded into a box-car up
at the stock chute, and while Bucks and big Bill Dancing watched them
an engine and the chief engineer's car were backed down the yard to
make up the special train. At the same moment, the two saw Stanley
walking across the yard with two engineers who were going to the front
with him.

Bucks looked with admiration at the soldier-constructionist. He was
slight in figure, wore the precise-looking military cap, and was
dressed with extreme care. He stepped with a light briskness that
implied an abundance of native energy, and his manner as he greeted
the two railroad men was intimate and gracious, putting them at once
at their ease. His smooth-shaven face, bronzed with service, and his
brown eyes, were alive every moment. Whatever the enterprise, Stanley
could call forth the loyalty and the best in those under him, and in
Dancing and Scott he had two men that worked well together and had in
their chief the unquestioning faith that insures devotion.

To these two more experienced men was now to be added a third, Bucks.
The train started almost at once, and Oliver, the colonel's cook,
prepared supper in his box-like kitchen and chopped his potatoes, for
frying, in muffled ragtime, as the puffing engine slowly drew the
train up the long gorge into the mountains. Bucks sat down at table
with the engineers and Stanley asked him many questions. He wanted to
know where Bucks had gone to school, why he had quitted at fifteen,
and what had brought him away out on the Desert to begin railroading.

When it appeared that Stanley as well as he himself was from
Pittsburgh, and even that Bucks had been named after the distinguished
officer--John Stanley Bucks--Bucks was happier than at any time since
he had left home.

The talk went on till very late. Stanley and General Park, who also
had been a regular-army man, told stories of the Civil War, just then
ended, and the giant lineman, Dancing, entertained the company with
stories of adventure incurred in the mountains and on the plains in
building the first transcontinental telegraph line.

Bucks sat for hours in silence while the three men talked; but he had
good ears and was a close listener. All the adventure books of his
boyhood reading had been bound up with this very country and with
these rugged mountains through which they were riding. The tales of
the people all about him during his youth had been of the far and
mysterious West--of the overland trail and the gold seekers, of Pike's
Peak and California, of buffaloes and trappers and Indians, and of the
Mormons and the Great Salt Lake. These had been his day-dreams, and at
last he was breathing the very air of them and listening to men who
had actually lived them.

The sleeping-bunks in the car could hardly be called berths, but they
served to lessen the fatigues of the night, and when Bucks woke in the
morning he saw from his window a vast stretch of rough, desert country
bordered by distant mountain peaks, some black, some brown, some
snow-capped in the morning sun. The train stopped in a construction
camp, near the end of the rails, and after a hasty breakfast Bucks
walked with the engineers up the track to the head-quarters of the
rail-laying gang.

The air was frosty. During the night snow had fallen, and as Bucks
followed his party the sun burst over the plain that they had crossed
in the night and lighted the busy camp with a flood of gold. It was a
camp such as few American boys had ever seen and of a type that no boy
will ever see again. Everywhere along the cuts and hillsides and in
sheltered spots the men had made temporary quarters by burrowing into
the clay or soft rock and making dugouts and canvas-roofed huts, with
earthen sides for walls.

But not all were so enterprising as this. Some laborers were camping
in old hogsheads. Even packing-boxes served others for shelter, but
were all so disposed within the cuts and among the ridges of the
railroad grade as to be safe from Indian forays. And along the
completed railroad, all the way from the Missouri River, material and
supply trains were moving to supply this noisy, helter-skelter camp,
which seemed to Bucks all confusion, yet was in reality all energy.

General Jack Casement, in charge, came forward to greet Stanley.

"And they tell me, general," said Stanley, "you are laying a mile a
day."

"If you would give us the ties, colonel," returned Casement,
short-bearded and energetic, "we should be laying two miles a day."

"I have turned the Missouri River country upside down for timber,"
returned Stanley. "The trouble is to get the material forward over a
single track so many hundred miles. However, we shall be getting ties
down the Spider Water within two weeks. I am on my way up there now to
see what the contractors are doing."

It was the first intimation Bucks had had as to the object of the
trip. Casement had a number of subjects to lay before his superior
while within consulting distance, and Bob Scott, an hour later,
announced that Stanley would not move on for two days. This left his
attendants free, and when Scott, low-voiced and good-natured, asked
Bucks if he wanted to go out on the Sweet Grass Plains with him after
an antelope, Bucks accepted eagerly. The two saddled horses and Bucks,
with a rifle borrowed from Sublette, followed Scott across a low-lying
range of hills broken by huge stone crags and studded with wind-blown
and stunted cedars, out upon the far-reaching expanse of an open
plain. The scene was inspiring, but impressions crowded so fast one
upon another that the boy from the Alleghanies could realize only that
he was filled with sensations of delight as his wiry buckskin
clattered furiously along the faint trail that carried him and his
guide to the north and west. The sun was high when Scott reined up
and, dismounting, tethered his horse in a glade hidden by a grove of
aspens and bade Bucks do the same.

"Getting hungry?" asked Scott, smiling at his companion. An answer
was written pretty plainly on Bucks's face.

"Didn't bring anything to eat, did you?" suggested Scott.

Bucks looked blank. "I never thought of it," he exclaimed. "Did you
bring anything?"

"Nothing but this," answered Scott, holding up a small buckskin sack
fitted with drawing strings.

"What is that, Bob?"

"It is what I carry wherever I ride. I carry nothing else. And it is
only a little bag of salt."

"A bag of salt!" cried Bucks. "Do you eat salt?"

"Wait and see," answered the scout. "Pull your belt up a notch. We've
got a little walking to do."

Scott, though of Chippewa blood, had been captured when a boy by the
Sioux and, adopted into the tribe, had lived with them for years. He
knew the mountains better than any man that served Stanley, and the
latter trusted him implicitly--nor was the confidence ever betrayed.

Walking rapidly over a low-lying divide beyond which lay a broad
valley marking the course of a shallow creek, Scott paused behind a
clump of cedars to scan the country. He expected to find antelope
along the creek, but could see none in any direction. Half a mile more
of scouting explained the absence of game, and Scott pointed out to
Bucks the trail of an Indian hunting party that had passed up the
valley in the morning. They were Cheyennes, Scott told his companion,
three warriors and two squaws--reading the information from signs that
were as plain to him as print--though Bucks understood nothing of it.
In the circumstances there was nothing for it but a fresh venture,
and, remounting, the Indian led the boy ten miles farther north to
where the plains stretched in a succession of magnificent plateaus,
toward the Sleepy Cat Mountains.

"We are in real Sioux country now," observed Scott, as he again
dismounted. "And we are as likely now to uncover a war party as a herd
of antelope."

"What should you do, Bob, if we met Sioux?"

"Run," smiled Bob, with Indian terseness. Yet somehow the boy felt
that Bob, in spite of what he said, would not run, and he realized for
a moment the apprehension of one but newly arrived on the frontier,
and still subject to tremors for his scalp. The scout took his stand
near a thicket of quaking asp and almost at once sighted a band of
antelope. Taking Bucks, he worked around the wind toward the band, and
directed him how and when to shoot if he got a chance. Bucks, highly
wrought up after the long crawl to get within range, did get a chance,
and with his heart beating like a trip-hammer, covered a buck and
fired. The scout shot immediately afterward, and the herd broke
swiftly for the timber along the creek. But Bucks, as well as his
experienced companion, had brought down an antelope.

Scott, as he joined his companion, looked at him with curiosity.
"Where did you learn to shoot?"

"I couldn't do it again, Bob," exclaimed Bucks frankly. "The only
shooting I've ever done is rabbit-shooting, or squirrel-shooting. I
was lucky for once, that's all."

"I hope your luck stays with us. If it does we may get back with all
of our hair," returned Scott. "The thing to do now is to lose no time
in leaving here. We are farther from camp than we ought to be. When I
get to running antelope I am apt to go as far as they do."

The two hunters got the carcasses across their horses, and acting on
Scott's admonition started to cover a good bit of the distance toward
camp before stopping.

The sun was already low in the west and Bucks realized that they had
been out all day. The hunters rode due southeast, to put every mile
possible between them and the Indian country before dark. They were
riding along in this manner at dusk, when Scott, leading, pointed to a
canyon that offered a hiding-place for the night, and directed his
horse into it. Scarcely had the two passed within the canyon walls
when Scott halted and, with a quick, low command to the boy, sprang
from his horse. Bucks lost no time in following suit: they had ridden
almost into an Indian camp, and when Bucks's feet touched the ground
Scott was covering with his rifle a Sioux brave who with two squaws
rose out of the darkness before him. Quick words passed between Scott
and the Indian in the Sioux tongue. Bucks's hair rose on end until the
confab quieted, and the scout's rifle came down. In an instant it was
all over, but in that instant the Easterner had lived years.

"It is all right," said Bob, turning to reassure his charge. "He is a
young chief--Iron Hand. I know his father. These three are alone.
Eight of them went out after buffalo five days ago. The second day
they fell in with Turkey Leg and a Cheyenne war party. Two of Iron
Hand's warriors were killed. The rest got separated and these three
lost their horses. Iron Hand," Scott nodded toward the silent Indian,
"was hit in the arm, and with his squaw and her sister has been trying
to get north, hiding by day and travelling by night. He can't shoot
his rifle; he thinks his arm is broken; and the squaws haven't been
able to kill anything. They are hungry, I guess."

"And did they tell you all this in those few words?" demanded Bucks
incredulously.

"It doesn't take many words to tell stories in this country. If a man
talked much he would be dead and buried before he got through."

"Bob, if they are hungry, give them some antelope."

Scott, who had meant to suggest the same thing, was pleased that the
offer should come from his companion, and so told the wounded Indian.
The latter drew himself up with dignity and spoke a few rapid words.
"He says he is glad," translated Bob, "that your heart is big. And
that it will be safer to go farther into the canyon. The Cheyennes are
hunting for them all around here, and if you are not afraid to camp
with the Sioux, we will stay with them here to-night. While the
Cheyennes are hunting them, they might find us. It will be about the
safest thing we can do."

"You know best," said his companion. "Can you trust this man?"

"Trust him?" echoed Bob mildly. "I wish I could trust the word of a
white man half as far as I can that of a Sioux. He understands
everything you say."

"Can he talk English?" asked Bucks in surprise.

"Better than I can."

It was with queer sensations that Bucks found himself in a hostile
country and with the deadliest enemies of the white man going into
camp for the night. Within a minute or two after Scott and the wounded
brave had picked a defended camp near a rivulet of water, the two
squaws had a fire going, and they set to work at once dressing an
antelope.

Savory morsels were cut from choice spots on the carcasses and these
were broiled by impaling them on long sticks over the fire. Bucks,
learning very fast with his eyes, saw how surprisingly small an affair
an Indian camp-fire is, and how much could be done with a few buffalo
chips, if one understood how to keep them renewed. Both safety and
convenience were served by the tiny blaze, and meat never tasted as
good to Bucks as it did on that clear, frosty night, broiled by the
two women and garnished from Bob Scott's provident salt bag.

After satisfying his ravenous hunger, which the Indians considered not
even a fair appetite, Bucks asked to look at the warrior's injured
arm, explaining that his father had been an army surgeon in the great
white man's war, as Bob Scott designated the Civil War in translating
for the Sioux. The arm, which was badly swollen, he found had indeed
been broken by a bullet near the wrist, but only one bone was
fractured, and, finding no trace of the bullet, the confident young
surgeon offered to set the fracture.

Iron Hand, nothing loath, accepted the offer, and after cleansing the
wound as well as it could be cleansed in running water hard by, Bucks
took the rough splints handily supplied by Scott's hunting-knife, and
pulling the bone into place with the scout's aid--though the brave
winced a little at the crude surgery--he soon had the forearm set and
was rewarded with a single guttural, "Wa-sha-ta-la!" from the stalwart
warrior, which, Bob explained, meant, "Heap good."

Sitting afterward by the camp-fire, Scott and Iron Hand, since the
young chief would not talk English, conversed in the Sioux tongue,
the scout translating freely for his younger companion, while the
squaws dressed the second antelope and cut it up for convenience in
carrying on the horses to Casement's camp. Scott reserved only the
hind-quarters of each animal for himself and Bucks, giving the rest to
their hosts.

When it was late, Scott showed the boy how to pillow his head on his
saddle and then stretched himself out to sleep. Bucks lay a long time
looking up at the stars. When he fell asleep, he woke again very soon.
His companion was sleeping peacefully beside him, and he saw Iron Hand
sitting by the fire. Bucks easily imagined his arm would keep him
awake. The squaws were still broiling pieces of antelope over the
little blaze, which was neither bigger nor smaller than before, and
together with the chief they were still eating. Bucks slumbered and
woke again and again during the night, but always to see the same
thing--the three Indians sitting about the fire, broiling and eating
the welcome and wholly unexpected venison.




CHAPTER IV


Before daybreak the scout roused his companion, and, after breakfast
with the three Sioux, who, according to Bob, were still eating supper,
the two hunters left their chance companions in the canyon, rode
rapidly south, and, with their antelope haunches as trophies, reached
Casement's camp about ten o'clock.

Stanley, who was conferring with Casement, came out of the tent
greatly amazed at his scout's venturing so far on a hunt as to expose
himself and his companion to danger.

"We were safe every minute, colonel," declared Scott.

"Safe?" echoed Stanley incredulously. "No man is safe, Bob, a mile
from the track-layers. The Sioux killed and scalped one of our
engineers not ten miles from here, when we were running this very line
last winter."

"This lad," nodded Scott, "is as good a shot as I am. He brought down
the first antelope. We get along with the Sioux all right, too, don't
we, Bucks?" he demanded, appealing to his fellow-hunter. "We ate
supper with them last night," he added to mystify his listeners, "and
camped with Iron Hand."

Even General Casement stared at this and waited to hear Scott tell
Stanley the story of their night's adventure. "However, colonel,"
concluded Scott, "there is a war party of Cheyennes near here. It is a
good time to be careful."

"All right, Bob," retorted Stanley, looking at his scout keenly,
though no one could be angry at Scott long. "You set the example."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when an operator came running
down the track from the telegraph tent with a message for General
Casement. It contained word from the operator at Peace River that
section men reported a war party of Indians, crossing the railroad
near Feather Creek, had attacked an emigrant party camped there.

In an instant the whole construction camp had the news and the work
was thrown into confusion. Feather Creek was twenty miles away. Orders
flew fast. A special train was made up, and Stanley taking command,
with Casement to aid, made ready instantly to leave for the scene of
the disaster.

The men running from the grade fell into line like veteran soldiers.
Indeed, most of them had seen service in the war just closed and the
smell of powder was no novelty. Bob Scott turned the venison over to
Oliver and loaded his horse in the car with those of the cavalrymen.
Under Stanley's orders he himself rode as pilot in the cab with the
engine crew. Bucks also reported to Stanley, and within twenty minutes
the relief train carrying two hundred men was plunging down the long
hill toward Feather Creek. Heads were craned out of the car windows,
and in rounding every curve Bucks, with the scout Leon Sublette,
sitting greatly wrought up behind Stanley and Casement, expected
momentarily to see Cheyenne war bonnets spring up out of the stunted
cedars that lined the hills along the right of way.

But not a sign could be seen of any living thing. The train reached
Feather Creek, and slowly crossed the bridge before Scott signalled
the engineman to stop. His eye had detected the scene of the fight,
and the ground beyond--a low cut--was favorable for getting the men
safely out of the cars.

As the engine slowed, a little scene of desolation beside the right of
way met Bucks's eye, and he caught sight of the ghastly battle-field.
A frightened section crew emerged from the wild-plum thickets along
the creek bottom, as the cavalrymen, followed by Casement's armed men,
poured out of the three cars. Stanley with his scouts led the way to
the emigrant camp, where the fight had taken place. The wagons had
been burned, the horses run off, and the three unfortunate men
butchered.

Bucks experienced a shock when Scott came upon the three dead men
whose mutilated bodies had been dragged from the scene by the section
men and who lay with covered faces side by side under a little
plum-tree, fragrant with blossoms and alive with the hum of bees. The
sunshine and the beauty of the spot contrasted strangely with the
revolting spectacle upon the grass.

Stanley gave the orders by which the bodies were conveyed to the train
and with the scouts and cavalrymen reconnoitering the surrounding
country, Casement's men lay on their arms in the shade of the cut.
Dancing rigged a pony instrument to the telegraph wires, which had not
been disturbed, and Bucks transmitted messages to Fort Kearney
advising the commanding officer of the murders and adding afterward
the report of Scott and Sublette as to the direction the marauders had
taken in flight.

"Who were the beasts, Bob, that could treat men like that?" demanded
Bucks in an angry undertone, when he had clicked the messages over the
wires.

"Bad Indians," answered Scott sententiously. "You have that kind of
white men, don't you? These fellows are probably Turkey Leg's thieving
Cheyennes. We shall hear more of them."

In the meantime the scouts and the cavalry detail rode out again
trying to unmask the Cheyennes, but without success. It was a week
before they were even heard of, and after an all-day attempt to do
something, the train backed up to camp and work was resumed as if
nothing had happened.

After waiting a few days, Stanley, always restive under idleness,
determined to push on across the Sweet Grass country with horses, to
learn how the timber cutters on the river were faring with their
slender military guard. The party, consisting of the detail of ten men
and the two scouts and Bucks, started one morning at sunrise and made
their way without molestation into the little-known mountain range
called then, as far south as Colorado, the Black Hills.

Stanley explained to Bucks during the morning how the chief
engineering difficulty of the whole transcontinental line confronted
the engineers right where they were now riding. Here the mountains
were thrown abruptly above the plain to a great height and the
locating engineers were still at their wits' ends to know how to
climb the tremendous ascent with practicable grades. Stanley became
so interested in studying the country during the day, as the
difficulties of the problem presented themselves afresh to him, that
the party made slow progress. Camp was pitched early in the afternoon
under a ridge that offered some natural features for defence. Here the
cavalrymen were left, and Stanley, taking Scott, started out after
some venison for supper. Bucks stood by, looking eager as the two made
ready for the hunt.

"Come along if you like," said Stanley at length. "You won't be happy,
Bucks, till you get lost somewhere in this country."

Sublette lent Bucks a rifle, and the three men set out together,
riding rapidly into the rough hills to the northwest. Scott covered
the ground fast, but he searched in vain for sign of antelope.
"Indians have been all over this divide," he announced after much hard
riding and a failure to find any game. "It doesn't look like venison
for supper to-night, colonel. Stop!" he added suddenly.

His companions, surprised by the tone of the last word, halted.
Leaning over his pony's neck the scout was reading the rocky soil. He
dismounted, and walking on, leading his horse, he inspected, very
carefully, the ground toward a dry creek bed opening to the east.

He was gone perhaps five minutes. "Colonel," he said, smiling
reassuringly, when he returned, "this is no place for us."

"Indians," said Stanley tersely.

"Cheyennes. Back to camp."

"Down the creek?" suggested Stanley.

"The bottom is alive with Indians."

"Up then, Bob?"

"Their camp is just above the bend. They have spotted our trail, too,
somehow. It may be they are riding easy to close in on us," smiled
Scott, while Bucks's hair began to pull. "Our way out is over this
divide." He indicated the rough country east of the creek as he
spoke.

"Divide!" exclaimed Stanley, looking up at the practically sheer walls
of rock that hedged the course of the creek. "We can't climb those
hills, if we never get out."

"They're not quite so bad as they look. Anyway, colonel, we've got
to."

"They can pick us off our horses like monkeys all the way up!"

"It's a chance for our scalps, colonel. And it will be as hard riding
for them as it is for us."

Stanley looked at Bucks with perplexity. "This boy!"

"I can make it, Colonel Stanley," exclaimed Bucks, who felt he must
say something.

Stanley still hesitated.

"We've no time to lose," smiled Scott significantly.

"Then go ahead, Bob."

They had half a mile of comparatively level ground to cross before
they began their climb, and this strip they rode very hard. When they
reached the hills, Scott headed for a forbidding-looking canyon and
urged his horse without ceasing through the rocky wash that strewed
its floor. Stanley, with an excellent mount, could have kept well up,
but he had put Bucks ahead of him in the safe place of the little
procession, and the boy had difficulty in keeping within call of
their active leader. The minute they were out of sight of the creek
bottoms, Scott, choosing an apparently unscalable ascent, urged his
horse up one of the canyon walls and the three were soon climbing in
order.

Happily, Bucks's scrub horse gave a better account of himself in
climbing than he had done in covering better ground. As their horses
stumbled hurriedly along the narrow ledges, they made noise enough to
wake the Indian dead and the loose rock tumbled with sinister echoes
down the canyon wall. But progress was made, and the white men felt
only anxious lest pursuit should catch them exposed on the uncovered
height up which they were fast clambering.

Secure in their escape, the three were nearing the coveted top when a
yell echoed through the canyon from below. There was no mistaking such
a yell. Bucks, who had never heard anything so ferocious, had no need
to be told what it was--it, so to say, introduced itself. And it was
answered by another yell, more formidable still, and again by a
chorus of yells. Then it seemed to Bucks's unaccustomed ears as if a
thousand lusty throats were opened, and scared rigid he looked behind
him and saw the canyon below alive with warriors.

They were riding helter-skelter to reach a range where they could pick
the fugitives off the crest of the canyon side. Within a minute,
almost, their rifles were cracking. Scott had already reached a point
of concealment, and above the heads of Bucks and Stanley fired his
rifle in answer. An Indian brave, riding furiously to a rock that
would have commanded Stanley and Bucks as they urged their horses on,
started in his saddle as Scott fired and clutched his side instantly
with his rifle hand. His pony bolted as the half-hitch of the rawhide
thong on its lower jaw was loosened and the rider, toppling, fell
heavily backward to the ground. The riderless horse dashed on. The
yelling Indians had had their blunt warning and now scurried for
cover. The interval, short as it was, gave Bucks and Stanley a
chance.

Spurring relentlessly and crouching low on their horses' necks, they
made a dash across the exposed wall of rock near the top, that lay
between them and safety. A renewed yell echoed the rage and chagrin of
their pursuers, and a quick fire of scattering shots followed their
rapid flight, but the Indians were confused, and Bucks, followed by
his soldier champion, flung himself from his saddle in the clump of
cedars behind which Scott, safely hidden, was reloading his rifle.
Choosing his opportunity carefully, Stanley fired at once at an
exposed brave and succeeded in disabling him. Bucks was forbidden to
shoot and told to hold his rifle, if it were needed, in readiness for
his companions. With the bullets cutting the twigs above their heads,
Stanley and Scott held a council of war. Scott insisted on remaining
behind to check their pursuers where they were, while the two with him
rode on to safety.

"I can hold this bunch, colonel," declared Scott briefly. "There may
not be a second chance as good. Get on with the boy before another
party cuts you off. They can cross below us and save two or three
miles. Get away."

"But how will you get away?" demanded Bucks.

Stanley laughed. "Never mind Bob. He could crawl through a Cheyenne
village with a camp-fire on his back. It's what to do with you, Bucks,
that bothers us."

"Just you get on, colonel," urged Bob. "I'll manage all right. Leave
your horse," he added, turning to Bucks, "and you take mine."

Bucks protested and refused to leave Scott with an inferior mount, but
his protests were of no avail. He was curtly directed by Stanley to do
as he was told, and unwillingly he turned his horse over to Scott and
took the scout's better steed. Scott added hurried and explicit
directions to Stanley as to the course to follow back to camp, and
without loss of time Stanley and Bucks crouching behind friendly rocks
led their horses up the inner canyon wall and, remounting at the top,
galloped hurriedly down a long ridge.

At intervals, shots from the Indians reached their ears, and
long-drawn yells, followed by the sharper crack of Scott's rifle,
echoed from the west as the scout held the wall against the enemy.
Bucks did not understand the real danger that the scout feared for
his party. It was that other parties of the marauding Cheyennes might,
by following the creek, gain the divide in time to cut off the
railroad men from their line of escape. The sounds of the stubborn
contest behind them died away as their straining horses gradually put
miles between them and the enemy. The fugitives had reached the summit
of the hills and with a feeling of safety were easing their pace when
Bucks discerned, almost directly ahead of them, dark objects moving
slowly along the foot of a wooded hill. The two men halted.




CHAPTER V


"Indians," announced Stanley after a brief moment of inspection.

"We are cut off," he added, looking alertly over the landscape about
them. "This way, Bucks. Ride as low as you can." Without further words
he made an abrupt turn to the right, striking south to get behind a
friendly butte that rose half a mile away.

"The question now is," said Stanley, as they held their horses up a
little after getting somewhat farther out of sight, "whether they have
likewise seen us."

The harried pair were not long in doubt. They had hardly changed their
course when there was immediate activity on the hill-side. The
railroad men spurred on; the distant horsemen, now on their flank,
dashed out upon the broad slope that lay between the two parties and
rode straight and hard after the fleeing men. Stanley steadied his
inexperienced companion as the latter urged his horse. "Not too hard
just now. Your pony will need all his wind. It's a question of getting
away with our scalps and we must be careful. Follow me."

Bucks's heart, as he looked back, crowded up into his throat. A long
skirmish line of warriors had spread across the unbroken plateau to
the east, and Stanley, with nothing but instinct for a guide, was
making at top speed to the south to get away from them.

As the two dashed on, they found to their consternation that the
country was growing smoother and affording fewer hiding-places from
the sharp eyes behind them. Stanley knew they must either ride through
the hills ahead or perish. He sought vainly for some break in the
great black wall of low-lying mountains toward which they were riding,
yet from what he knew of the country he hardly dared hope for one.

He had reconnoitred these hills time after time when running the
railroad lines and knew pretty well where he was. The pursuers, too,
apparently sure of their prey, rode hard, gradually lessening the
distance that separated them from the wary soldier and his companion.
The Indians had ceased yelling now. It was beyond that. But even in
his excitement and fear the inexperienced boy could not but admire the
composure and daring of his companion.

As Stanley glanced now and again back at his enraged enemies he was
every inch a soldier. And he watched the distance between the
Cheyennes and himself as coolly as if calculating a mere problem in
geometry. While saving every possible breath for his horses, he yet
managed to keep the Cheyennes at a distance. The Indians, bent on
overhauling the fleeing men before they could reach even the scant
protection of the scattered timber they were now approaching,
redoubled their efforts to cut off the escape.

Forced by the desperation of his circumstances, Stanley bent more and
more to the west of south, even though in doing so he seemed to be
getting into a more hopeless country. The veteran campaigner eyed
Bucks's horse carefully as he turned in his saddle, but Scott's wiry
beast appeared quite fresh, and Stanley, turning his eyes, again swept
the horizon for a friendly break in the black walls ahead. As he did
so he was startled to see, directly in front, Indians riding at full
speed out of the hills he was heading for. He reined his galloping
horse and turned straight into the west.

"Bucks," he exclaimed, looking with concern at the rider now by his
side, "it's a case of obey orders now. If I stop at any time, you ride
straight on--do you understand? You've got a revolver?" Bucks tapped
the big Colt at his side. "Don't let them take you alive. And hold
your last shot till a buck rides in for your scalp."

The straining horses seemed to understand the sharp words that passed
from saddle to saddle. The Indians were already within gunshot, but
too sure of their game to lose any time in shooting; nor was Stanley
willing to waste a shot upon them. As he dodged in between a broken
wall of granite and a scrubby clump of cedars, closely followed by
Bucks, their pursuers could have picked either man from his saddle.

Stanley had no longer any fixed purpose of escape. He meant merely to
dismount when he could ride no farther and sell his life as best he
could, while Bucks took such further chance of escape as his
companion's last stand might afford. The hard-driven fighter was even
looking for a well-placed rock to drop behind, when the horse plunging
under him lurched to one side of the cedars and a gulf in the walls
suddenly opened before his surprised rider.

A rotten ledge of burned granite seemed to head a mountain wash
directly in their path. There was a sheer drop of twenty feet to the
crumbling slope of disintegrated stone under the head of the draw
itself, but Stanley, without looking back, never hesitated. Urging his
panting horse, he made a flying leap down into space, and horse and
rider landed knee-deep in the soft, gravelly granite below them.

Bucks's mustang shied on the brink. He spurred him excitedly, and the
trembling beast, nerving himself, leaped far out over the ledge,
following Stanley so closely that he almost struck him with his hoofs
as he went flying over the engineer's head. Bucks rolled headlong as
his horse plunged into the loose débris. He scrambled to his feet and,
spitting the gravel from between his bruised lips, caught the bridle
of his horse as the latter righted himself.

No legs were broken and much was already gained.

"Quick!" cried Stanley. "Ride for your life!" he shouted as Bucks
regained his saddle. The two spurred at the same time and dashed down
the draw at breakneck speed just as the Indians yelling on the brink
of the ledge stopped to pour a volley after the desperate men. Unable
to land an effective shot, the Cheyennes, nothing daunted, and
hesitating only a moment, plunged over the precipice after their
quarry.

But they had lost their great advantage. The dry watercourse proved
unexpectedly good riding for the fleeing railroad men. It was a
downhill run, with their hopes rising every moment. Moreover, the draw
soon turned sharply to the south and put a big shoulder of granite
between the pursuers and the pursued. The horses of the latter were
now relieved, and the wary Stanley, riding with some reserve speed,
held his rifle ready for a stern shot should one become necessary. He
found himself riding between two almost perpendicular walls washed by
the same granite gravel into which they had plunged on the start, but
with the course again turning, to his surprise, to the east. Once,
Stanley checked the flight long enough to stop and listen, but the two
heard the active Indians clattering down the canyon after them, and
rode on and on.

As they could see by the lengthening shadow on the mountain-sides far
above them, the sun was setting.

"Cheer up," cried Stanley, who had put his companion ahead of him.
"We've got the best of them. All we need is open country."

He did not mention the chances of disaster, which were that they might
encounter an obstacle that would leave them at bay before their
tireless pursuers. Mile after mile they galloped without halting again
to see whether they were being chased. Indeed, no distance seemed too
considerable to put between them and the active war-paint in the
saddles behind.

A new turn in the canyon now revealed a wide valley opening between
the hills before them. Far below, golden in the light of the setting
sun, they saw the great eastern slope of the Black Hills spreading out
upon a beautiful plain.

Stanley swung his hat from his head with an exulting cry, and Bucks,
without quite understanding why, but assuming it the right thing to
do, yelled his loudest. On and on they rode, down a broad, spreading
ridge that led without a break from the tortuous hills behind them
into the open country far below. Stanley put full ten miles between
himself and the canyon they had ridden out of before he checked his
speed. The Indians had completely disappeared and, disappointed in
their venture, had no doubt ridden back to their fastnesses to wait
for other unwary white men. Stanley chose a little draw with good
water and grass, and night was just falling as they picketed their
exhausted horses and stretched themselves, utterly used up, on the
grass.

"We are safe until morning, anyway," announced Stanley as he threw
himself down. "And this Indian chase may be the luckiest thing that
has ever happened to me in the troublesome course of an unlucky life.

"You don't understand," continued the engineer, wiping the sweat and
dust from his tired face. Bucks admitted that he did not.

"No matter," returned his companion; "it isn't necessary now. You will
sometime. But I think I have done in the last hour something I have
been trying to do for years. Many others have likewise failed in the
same quest."

Bucks listened with growing interest.

"Yes, for years," Stanley went on, "incredible as it may sound, I have
been searching these mountains for just such a crevice as we have this
moment ridden down. You see how this range"--the exhausted engineer
stretched flat on his back, but, with burning eyes, pointed to the
formidable mountain wall that rose behind them in the dusk of the
western sky--"rises abruptly from the plains below. Our whole grade
climb for the continental divide is right here, packed into these few
miles. Neither I nor any one else has ever been able to find such a
pass as we need to get up into it. But if we have saved our scalps, my
boy, you will share with me the honor of finding the pass for the
Union Pacific Railroad over the Rocky Mountains."

They were supperless, but it was very exciting, and Bucks was
extremely happy. Stanley watched that night until twelve. When he woke
Bucks the moon was rising and the ghostly peaks in the west towered
sentinel-like above the plains flooded with silver. The two were to
move at one o'clock when the moon would be high enough to make riding
safe. It was cold, but fire was forbidden.

The horses were grazing quietly, and Bucks, examining his revolver,
which he had all the time felt he was wretchedly incompetent to shoot,
sat down beside Stanley, already fast asleep, to stand his watch. He
had lost Sublette's rifle in falling into the wash-out. At least he
had found no leisure to pick it up and save his hair in the same
instant, and he wondered now how much he should have to pay for the
rifle.

When the sun rose next morning the two horsemen were far out of the
foot-hills and bearing northeast toward camp--so far had their ride
for life taken them from their hunting ground. They scanned the
horizon at intervals, with some anxiety, for Indians, and again with
the hope of sighting their missing guide. Once they saw a distant herd
of buffalo, and Bucks experienced a shock until assured by Stanley
that the suspicious objects were neither Cheyennes nor Sioux.

By nine o'clock they had found the transcontinental telegraph line and
had a sure trail to follow until they discovered the grade stakes of
the railroad, and soon descried the advance-guard of the graders busy
with plough and shovel and scraper. As they rode into camp the very
first man to emerge from Casement's tent, with his habitual smile, was
Bob Scott.

Casement himself, who had heard Scott's story when the latter had come
in at daybreak, was awaiting Stanley's return with anxiety, but this
was all forgotten in the great news Stanley brought. Sublette and
Scott now returned to the hunting camp for the cavalry detail, and,
reinforced by these, the two heroes of the long flight rode back to
reconnoitre their escape from the mountains. Bucks rode close to Bob
Scott and learned how the scout had outwitted his assailants at the
canyon, and how after they had all ridden out of it, he had ridden
into it and retraced with safety in the night the path that the
hunters had followed in riding into the hill country.

The second ride through the long defile, which itself was now the
object of so much intense inspection, Bucks found much less exciting
than the first. The party even rode up to where the first flying leap
had been made, and to Bucks's joy found Sublette's rifle still in the
wash; it had been overlooked by the Indians.

What surprised Bucks most was to find how many hours it took to cover
the ground that Stanley and he had negotiated in seemingly as many
minutes.




CHAPTER VI


After a week in Casement's camp, Stanley and his cavalrymen,
accompanied by Dancing, Scott, and Bucks, struck north and east toward
the Spider Water River to find out why the ties were not coming down
faster. Rails had already been laid across the permanent Spider Water
Bridge--known afterward as the first bridge, for the big river
finished more than one structure before it was completely subdued--and
the rail-laying was hampered only by the lack of ties.

The straggling bands of Cheyennes had in the interval been driven out
of the foot-hills by troops sent against them, and Stanley and his
little escort met with no trouble on his rapid journey.

Toward evening of the second day a broad valley opened on the plain
before them, and in the sunset Bucks saw, winding like a silver thread
far up toward the mountains, the great stream about which he had
already heard so much. Camp was pitched on a high bluff that
commanded the valley in both directions for many miles, and after
supper Scott and Bucks rode down to the river.

In its low-water stage nothing could have looked more sluggish or more
sleepily deceptive than the mighty and treacherous stream. Scott and
his companions always gave the river the name the Sioux had long ago
given it because of its sudden, ravening floods and its deadly traps
laid for such unwary men or animals as trusted its peaceful promise
and slept within reach of its cruel power.

Standing in the glow of the evening sky in this land where the clear,
bright light seemed to lift him high above the earth, Bucks looked at
the yellow flood long and thoughtfully--as well he might--for the best
of his life was to be spent within ken of its flow and to go in doing
battle with it himself, or in sending faithful men to its battling,
sometimes to perish within its merciless currents.

Next morning as the party, following a trail along the bluffs, rode up
in the direction of the contractors' camps they discerned out on the
river bottom a motley cluster of tents and shanties pitched under a
hill. A number of flatboats lay in the backwater behind the bend and a
quantity of ties corded along the bank indicated a loading-place, but
no one seemed to be doing any loading. The few men that could be seen
in the distance appeared to be loafing in the sunshine along the
straggling street-way that led to the river. Stanley checked his
horse.

"What place is that?" he demanded of Scott.

"That," returned the guide, "is Sellersville."

"Sellersville," echoed Stanley. "What is Sellersville?"

"Sellersville is where they bring most of the ties for the boats."

"Have they started a town down there on the bottoms?"

"They have started enough saloons and gambling dens to get the money
from the men that are chopping ties."

Stanley contemplated for a moment the ill-looking settlement. A mile
farther on they encountered a number of men following the trail up
the river.

A small dog barked furiously at the Stanley party as they came up, and
acted as if he were ready to fight every trooper in the detail. He
dashed back and forth, barking and threatening so fiercely that every
one's attention was drawn to him.

Stanley stopped the leader and found he was a tie-camp foreman from
up-river taking men to camp. "Is that your dog?" demanded Stanley,
indicating the belligerent animal who seemed set upon eating somebody
alive.

"Why, yes," admitted the foreman philosophically. "He sort o' claims
me, I guess."

"What do you keep a cur like that around for?"

"Can't get rid of him," returned the foreman. "He is no good, but the
boys like his impudence. Down, Scuffy!" he cried, looking for a stick
to throw at his pet.

Bucks surveyed the company of men. They were a sorry-looking lot. The
foreman explained that he had dragged them out of the dens at
Sellersville to go back to work. When remonstrated with for the poor
showing the contractors were making, the foreman pointed to the
plague-spot on the bottoms.

"There's the reason you are not getting any ties," said he lazily.
"We've got five hundred men at work up here; that is, they are
supposed to be at work. These whiskey dives and faro joints get them
the minute they are paid, and for ten days after pay-day we can't get
a hundred men back to camp."

The foreman as he spoke looked philosophically toward the canvas
shanties below. "I spend half my time chasing back and forth, but I
can't do much. They hold my men until they have robbed them, and then
if they show fight they chuck them into the river. It's the same with
the flatboat men." He turned, as he continued, to indicate two
particularly wretched specimens. "These fellows were drugged and
robbed of every dollar they brought here before they got to work at
all."

Stanley likewise gazed thoughtfully upon the cluster of tents and
shacks along the river landing. He turned after a moment to Scott.
"Bob," said he, looking back again toward the river, "what gang do you
suppose this is?"

Scott shook his head. "That I couldn't say, Colonel Stanley."

"Suppose," continued Stanley, still regarding the offending
settlement, "you and Dancing reconnoitre them a little and tell me who
they are. We will wait for you."

Scott and the lineman swung into their saddles and started down the
trail that led to the landing. Stanley spoke again to the foreman.
"Can those men use an axe?" he demanded, indicating the two men that
the foreman asserted had been robbed.

"They are both old choppers--but this gang at Sellersville stole even
their axes."

"Leave these two men here with me," directed Stanley as he watched
Scott and Dancing ride down toward Sellersville. "I may have something
for them to chop after a while."

The foreman assented. "I don't like the bunch," he murmured; "but
nobody at our camp wants to tackle them. What can we do?"

While the foreman continued to talk, Stanley again looked over the
human wrecks that he had rounded up and brought out of Sellersville.
"What can we do?" echoed Stanley, repeating the last question tartly.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing we can do. We can throw Sellersville
into the river."

Dancing and Scott were gone half an hour. The report, when they
returned, was not encouraging. "It is a bunch of cutthroats from
Medicine Bend, colonel," said Bob Scott.

"All friends of yours, I presume, Bob," returned Stanley.

The scout only smiled. "John Rebstock is there with his following. But
the boss, I think, is big George Seagrue. He is mean, you know. George
has got two or three men to his credit."

"Are we enough to clean them out, Bob?" inquired Stanley impatiently.

Scott looked around and his eye rested for a moment on Dancing. He
hitched his trousers. "There's about thirty men down there. I expect,"
he continued reflectively, "we can take care of them if we have to."

Stanley turned to the sergeant of his troopers. "Pitch a permanent
camp, sergeant. There will be nothing to take us any farther up the
river."

As Stanley gave the order Bucks noticed that Dancing winked at Scott.
And without the meaning glances exchanged by the lineman and the
scout, Bucks would have understood from Stanley's manner that he meant
strong measures. Stanley sent a further message to the contractor, and
the foreman, followed by his convoy of humanity, started on. The
soldiers, foreseeing a lively scene, stripped their pack-horses and
set at work pitching their tents.

Leaving four men in camp, the engineer, accompanied by his escort,
rode down the bluffs and, striking a lumber road, galloped rapidly
through the poplar bottom-lands toward the gamblers' camp. It was an
early tour for human wolves to be stirring, and the invaders clattered
into Sellersville before they attracted any attention.

A bugler, however, riding into the middle of the settlement, sounded a
trumpet call, and at the unwonted notes frowsy, ill-shaped heads
appeared at various shanty doors and tent-flaps to see what was
doing. Stanley sent one man from door to door to notify the inmates of
each shelter to pack up their effects and make ready to move without
delay.

Five troopers were detailed to guard three gambling tents that stood
together in the middle of the camp, each of these being flanked by
smaller dens. Word was then passed to the gamblers and saloon-keepers
to line up on the river front.

Stanley regarded the gathering crowd with a cold eye. Scott, who stood
near Bucks, pointed out a square-shouldered man with a deep scar
splitting one cheek. "Do you know that fellow, Bucks?" he asked in an
undertone.

"No; who is he?"

"That is a Medicine Bend confidence man, Perry. Do you remember the
woman you helped out with a ticket to Iowa? Perry is her husband--the
man that Dave Hawk made pay up."

Perry was a type of the Sellersville crowd now being evicted. There
was much talk as the soldiers urged and drove the gang out of one
haunt after another and a good deal of threatening as the leaders
marched out in front of Stanley.

"Who is running this camp?" demanded the officer curtly. The men
looked at one another. A fat, slow-moving man with small blue eyes and
a wheezy voice answered: "Why, no one in particular, colonel. We're
just a-camping in a bunch. What's a-matter? Seagrue here," he nodded
to a sharp-jawed companion, "and Perry," he added, jerking his thumb
toward the scarred-faced man, "and me own these two big tents in
partners."

"What's your name?"

"My name's Rebstock."

"Produce the axes stolen here from these two men," said Stanley,
indicating the choppers behind him. There was a jangle of talk between
Rebstock and his associates, and Perry, much against his inclination,
was despatched to hunt up the axes. It was only a moment before he
returned with them.

Rebstock, with a show of virtue, reprimanded Perry severely for
harboring the men that had stolen the axes. "Sorry it happened,
colonel," he grumbled, after he had abused the thieves roundly in a
general way, "and I'll see it doesn't happen again. We can't watch
everybody in a place like this. Tell your men," he continued,
expanding his chest, "to leave their axes with me when they come to
Sellersville--what?"

The assurances were lost on Stanley. "Rebstock," said he, in a tone
that Bucks had not heard before from him, "take your personal effects,
all of you--and nothing else--and load them on a flatboat. I will give
you one hour to get-out of here."

Rebstock almost fell over backward. He wheezed in amazement. There was
an outburst of indignant protests. A dozen men clamored at once. Perry
rushed forward to threaten Stanley; others cursed and defied him.

"Who are you, and what do you mean giving orders like that?" demanded
Seagrue, confronting him angrily.

"No matter who I am, you will obey the orders. And you can't take any
tents or gambling apparatus or liquors. Pack up your clothes and camp
stuff--nothing else--and get out."

If a bombshell had dropped into Sellersville, consternation could not
have been more complete. But it became quickly apparent that not all
of the gang would surrender without a fight. The leaders retreated for
a hurried consultation.

Rebstock walked back presently and confronted Stanley. "What's your
law for this?" he demanded, breathless with anger.

Stanley pointed to the ground under their feet.

"What's your title to this land, Rebstock? It belongs to the railroad
that those ties belong to. Where is your license from the United
States Government to sell whiskey here? You are trespassers and
outlaws, with no rights that any decent man ought to respect. You and
your gang are human parasites, and you are going to be stripped and
sent down the river as fast as these flatboats will carry you."

Without waiting for any rejoinder, Stanley turned on his heel and
walked away, leaving Rebstock speechless. The threats against the
intruders continued, but Stanley paid no attention to any of them.
Scott and the five troopers faced the gamblers. Stanley called to the
two wood-choppers, who stood near with their axes, and pointed to the
gambling tents.

"Chop up every wheel and table in there you can find," said he.

A cry went up from Perry when he heard the order, but the axemen,
nothing loath, sprang inside to their work, and the crashing of the
gambling furniture resounded through the alarmed camp. Stanley made no
delay of his peremptory purpose. The tent attacked belonged to
Seagrue, who, common report averred, feared nothing and nobody, while
the gambling implements were Perry's.

Seagrue rushed to his property, revolver in hand. Bill Dancing, who
stood at Stanley's side, stepped into his way.

"Hold on, Seagrue," he said. The gambler, fully as large a man as
Dancing, faced his opponent with his features fixed in rage. "Get
away," he shouted, "or I will knock your head off."

All eyes centred on the two men. Every one realized that open war was
on and that it needed only a spark to start the shooting. The
gamblers, rallying to Seagrue, backed him with oaths and threats.

"Seagrue, put down that pistol or I'll wring your neck," returned the
lineman, baring his right arm as he sauntered toward the outlaw.
Bucks, beside Stanley, stood transfixed as he watched Dancing. The
lineman's revolver was slung in the holster at his side.

Seagrue hesitated. He saw Bob Scott standing in the doorway of the
gambling tent with his rifle lying carelessly over his arm. He was
actually covering Seagrue where he stood--and Seagrue knew that Bob
Scott was deadly with a rifle. But Dancing was walking directly up to
him and Seagrue dared not be shamed before his own associates. He
jumped back to fire, but it was too late.

Dancing caught his wrist. Both were men of great strength, and their
muscles knotted as they grappled. It was only after a moment that the
lineman could be seen to gain. Then, as he bent the gambler's arm
back, he suddenly released it and struck the revolver out of his hand.
Seagrue, with a curse, sprang back, and drawing a knife rushed for the
second time at the lineman. Dancing jumped to one side. As he did so
he seized an axe from the hand of one of the choppers and turned again
on Seagrue. The gambler made a lunge at his throat, but as he threw
himself forward, Dancing, springing away, brought the axe around like
a flash and laid it flat across his assailant's forearm. The knife
flew twenty feet, and before the gambler could recover himself the
railroad man with one hand like a vice on his throat bore him to the
ground.

"Give me a piece of rope," muttered Dancing as Stanley ran up.

[Illustration: IT WAS ONLY AFTER A MOMENT THAT THE LINEMAN COULD BE SEEN
TO GAIN.]

Bob Scott slashed a tent guy and handed it to him. In another minute
Dancing, in spite of Seagrue's struggles, had lashed his prisoner hand
and foot. Picking him up bodily, he walked unopposed to the landing,
and to the astonishment of the spectators heaved Seagrue with scant
ceremony into a flatboat. There a trooper kept him quiet. Walking
back, the lineman brushed the dust of the encounter from his arms as
if to invite any further Sellersville champion to come forward. But
John Rebstock, the really responsible head of the place, showed no
desire to meet Dancing, and Perry, the sneak of the trio, only ranted
while Rebstock stood at a respectable distance wheezing his surprise
at the tremendous exhibition of strength. And the work of destruction
went forward.

Adjoining the Seagrue tent stood a saloon in which the men were now
ordered to demolish the stock. This renewed the excitement among
Rebstock's followers.

"Don't waste any time," was Stanley's order. "They may rush us. Knock
in the head of a keg of whiskey, pour it over the bar, and burn the
shanty."

The gamblers were, in fact, mustering for a charge on the invaders.
Before they could act the saloon was ablaze and the flames, rising
amid the yells and execrations of its owners, leaped to the big tent
adjoining. In front of this the soldiers in a skirmish line held back
the scurrying outlaws. Within a few moments Sellersville was ablaze
from end to end and its population, including Perry and Rebstock,
driven to the flatboats, were floating with threats and curses down
the muddy current of the Spider Water.




CHAPTER VII


Stanley's next camp was pitched down the river where the overland
telegraph line crossed the Spider Water, and Bucks, installed in a
smart army tent with a cracker-box for a stool and a packing-case for
an instrument table, was, through Dancing's efforts, put in
communication by wire with Medicine Bend and the west country as far
as Sleepy Cat, where the War Department was establishing an army
post.

Stanley, with Bob Scott, now spent a great deal of time in the saddle
between the bridge and the upper tie-camps, and his presence made
itself felt in the renewed energy everywhere apparent among the
contractors and their men. Bucks, chained to a wire, as he expressed
it, found the days dragging again and would much rather have been at
liberty to ride with Scott, who, when free, hunted in the foot-hills.

One day Bucks was sitting alone in his tent, looking for the
hundredth time over a worn copy of _Harper's Weekly_ that he had
picked up at Casement's camp, when a dog put his nose in the tent
door. A glance revealed merely a disconsolate, unpromising cur, yet
Bucks thought he had seen the dog before and was interested. He seemed
of an all-over alkali-brown hue, scant of hair, scant of tail, and
with only melancholy dewlap ears to suggest a strain of nobler blood
in an earlier ancestry. He looked in with the furtive eye of the
tramp, and as if expecting that a boot or a club would most probably
be his welcome.

But Bucks at the moment was lonely--as lonely as the dog himself--and
as the two fixed their eyes intently on each other, Bucks remembered
that this was the tie foreman's dog, Scuffy.

Scuffy had appeared at the psychological moment. Bucks regarded him in
silence, and the dog perceiving no immediate danger of assault stood,
in silence, returning Bucks's stare. Then watching the boy's eye
carefully, the dog cocked his head just the least bit to one side. It
was a mute appeal, but a moving one. Bucks continued, however, his
non-committal scrutiny, recalling that the foreman had said nothing
good of Scuffy, and the homeless cur stood in doubt as to his
reception. But realizing, perhaps, that he had nothing to lose and
everything to gain, the little vagabond played his last card--he
wagged his stubby tail.

A harder heart than Bucks's might have been touched. The operator held
out his hand. No more was needed; the melancholy tramp stepped
cautiously forward waving his alert flag of truce. He sniffed long and
carefully as he neared Bucks, looked solicitously into the boy's eyes,
and then smelt and licked the proffered hand. It was a token of
submission as plainly expressed as when Friday, kneeling, placed
Robinson Crusoe's foot on his head. Bucks reached into a paper bag
that Bill Dancing had left on the table and gave the dog a cracker.

Scuffy snapped up the offering like one starving. A second cracker and
a third disappeared at single gulps. For the length of the dog, the
size of his mouth appeared enormous. In a moment the cracker-bag was
emptied and Scuffy again licked the friendly hand. It did not take
Bucks long to decide what to do. In another moment he had resolved to
adopt his tramp visitor. The day happened to be Friday, and Bucks at
once renamed him Friday. When Dancing, who had been with Bob Scott
hunting, came in late that night he found Bucks asleep and Scuffy
lying in Dancing's own bed, from which he was ejected only after the
most vigorous language on his own part as well as on that of the
lineman. Even then, Scuffy retreated only as far as Bucks's feet,
where he slept for the rest of the night undisturbed.

"Where did he come from?" growled Dancing in the morning as he sat
with his pipe regarding the intruder, who acted quite at home, with a
critical eye.

Bucks explained that this was the tie foreman's runaway dog, Scuffy,
and beyond Scuffy's first appearance at the tent door he could tell
him nothing. Scuffy simply and promptly assumed a place in camp and
Bucks became, willy-nilly, his sponsor. But his effort to rename him
came to nothing. Scuffy gave no heed when called "Friday," but for
"Scuffy" he sprang to attention instantly.

Bill Dancing decided, off-hand, that "the pup" was worthless. Scott,
whose smile was kindly even when sceptical, only corrected Bill to the
extent of saying that Friday or Scuffy, whoever or whatever he might
be, was no pup; that he was a full-grown dog and in Bob's judgment he
would need no guardian.

One day, shortly after Scuffy had been put upon the pay-roll, Scott
came in from a trip after venison with word that there were black
bears in the hill canyons. The thought of bear's meat aroused every
one, and Stanley suggested a bear hunt. Scott had to send down to
Stanley's ranch at Medicine Bend for his dogs and some delay followed.
But when the three hounds arrived there was excitement enough to
compensate for it. One of the dogs was a big black fellow and his
companions were brown full-bloods. The hounds, one and all, set on
Scuffy the moment they reached camp, and it was only by the most
dexterous manoeuvres that the strange dog escaped being eaten alive.
Indeed, Bob Scott remarked at once that if Scuffy should survive the
greetings of his new comrades he would prove his right to live. The
hounds always set upon him at meal-times, usually chewed him at
bed-time, and harried him at all times.

To a less hopeful temperament than Scuffy's, life would not have
seemed worth living. It was only Bucks who insured him anything at all
to eat, and the enmity of the big, rangy hounds for the lean and
hungry tramp dog left him no peace save when they were fighting in
dreams. To accept life under such conditions indicated that Scuffy was
a philosopher, and he accepted the conditions cheerfully, filching
what he could of sustenance from the common pot and licking his
troublesome wounds at night after his truculent companions had gone to
sleep.

As soon as the tie-supply trouble had been lessened Stanley took
things more leisurely and the interval afforded the opportunity for
the delayed bear hunt. Bob Scott and Dancing were to go with Stanley,
and Bucks being freed for one day from his key was invited to be of
the party. All hands were in the saddle by daybreak, and Scott's
hounds were baying and tearing around camp wild with excitement.

At the last moment a complication arose. Scuffy, who until the moment
of starting had for prudential reasons--that is, to avoid being eaten
up--remained in obscurity, joined the hunters. Every one in turn tried
to drive him back, but long practice had made him expert in dodging
missiles and had rendered him insensible to reproach. The hounds were
too filled with the prospect of sport to pay any attention to Scuffy.
In vain, Bob Scott tried to set them on him and drive him back to
camp. On this occasion, when bullying would plainly have been
justified, no hound would assail Scuffy. Bucks drove him again and
again from the flank of the advance only to have the mortification of
seeing him reappear a mile or two farther along the trail, and it was
at last decided to leave him to his fate at the paw of a bear--which
no one made doubt he was certain to suffer. At that moment Bucks and
Bill Dancing, riding together, saw a deer frightened from a thicket
running toward the river. Bucks jumped from his horse and lifted his
rifle to take a shot, but by the time he was ready to fire the deer
had vanished.

Led by Scott, the hunters rode at once into the rough country to the
west, where in the mountain fastnesses the bears loved to feed. The
hounds gave tongue vigorously, and Scuffy, who had by this time not
only established himself but had impudently taken the lead and was
heading the pack, barked loudest and longest.

"Did anybody ever see conceit equal to that?" demanded Stanley. "Look
at that cur leading the hounds."

Bucks was mortified and expressed his regret.

"Don't mind him, Bucks," remarked Dancing consolingly. "That dog won't
bother long. The first time the hounds run in, the bear will finish
_him_."

Bucks did not know precisely what Bill meant by "running in," but he
was not to be long in doubt. The pack struck a fresh trail almost at
once and the hunters had a long ride along a mountain-side covered
with fallen timber and cut by innumerable wash-outs that made the
riding hard and dangerous. Scott found intervals to encourage Bucks,
whose youth and inexperience made his task of keeping up with the
others a difficult one. "Take it easy," said Scott encouragingly as
the operator tried to urge his mount.

"I am keeping you all back, Bob."

"Plenty of time. You are doing wonders for mountain-riding. When we
close in on the bear don't be too keen to get near him. You wouldn't
be safe for a minute on your horse if the dogs didn't keep the bear
busy. As long as the dogs worry the bear you are safe. A bear will
never chase a man as long as a dog keeps at him. It's only when the
dogs refuse to go in any longer that the danger begins. When that
happens, look out. Keep a respectful distance all the time and a road
open behind you. That's all there is to a bear fight."

As he spoke, the hounds yelped sharply and Scott spurred forward. The
hunters were threading a grove of quaking asp and the dogs had come
up with the bear on an opening of shale rock surrounded by down
timber. Throwing his reins and advancing cautiously on foot, Stanley,
followed by his companions, who spread themselves in a wide
semicircle, took his place, the others, as they best could, choosing
their own.

The bear, a full-grown male, met the onset of the hounds with grim
confidence. The dogs encircled him with a ring of ferocious teeth,
running in from behind whenever they could to nip the huge beast in
the haunches or on the flank. But the surprise of the encounter was
Scuffy.

"Look," cried Bill Dancing, under whose wing Bucks had taken his post.
"Look at him! Why, the pup is a world-beater!"

In truth, Scuffy was the liveliest and most impudent dog in the pack,
and when the fight was fully on, managed to worry the angry bear more
than the hounds did. Within a moment the black hound, over-bold,
imprudently rushed the bear in front. A paw darting from the huge
beast caught him like a trip-hammer and stretched him helpless. In
that moment the bear exposed himself to Stanley's rifle and a shot
rang across the mountain-side. Scott watched the result anxiously. But
the slug instead of dropping the bear served only to enrage him. For
an instant the two hounds lost their heads and the infuriated bear
charged Bucks and Bill Dancing.

The shale opening became a scene of confusion. Exposing himself
recklessly, Scott tried to urge the dogs forward, but they had lost
their nerve. It needed only this to upset everything. The hunters
closed in together, and the critical moment had come; deaf alike to
command and entreaty, the two hounds refused to go in, and Scuffy,
flying wildly about the bear, seemed unable to check him. Dancing
stopped long enough to take one shot, and ran--with Bucks, who had
found no chance to shoot, following. The bear gained fast on the
long-legged lineman and his boy companion. A wash-out, hidden by a
clump of bushes, lay directly in the path of flight. Dancing,
perceiving it, dashed to the left and escaped. He shouted a warning to
Bucks, who, not understanding, plunged straight over the declivity
and sprawled into the wash-out with the bear after him. Catching his
rifle, the boy scrambled to his feet with his pursuer less than twenty
feet away. Between the two there was only open ground, and the bear
was scrambling for Bucks when Scuffy sprang down the shale bank and
confronted the enemy.

It looked like certain death for Scuffy, but the tramp dog did not
hesitate. He rushed at the bear with a fury of snapping, though not
without a lively respect for the sweep of the brute's fore paws. The
little dog, freeing himself forever in that moment from the stigma of
cur, put up a fight that astonished the big brute.

Scuffy raced at him first on one side and then on the other, bounding
in and out like a rubber ball, dashing across his front and running
clear around the circling bear, nipping even an occasional mouthful of
hair from his haunches. He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and
simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks
realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and
destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long.
Skilful as the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist
quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than
seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his
huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his
disordered faculties, raised his rifle to help his champion with a
shot. His heart beat like a hammer in his throat, but he knew there
was only one thing to do, that was to get the rifle-sights carefully
lined in his eye and shoot when Scuffy gave him an opening.

It came in a moment when the bear turned to smash Scuffy on his flank.
Bucks fired. To his amazement, no result followed. The failure of the
bear to show any sign of being hit stunned him, and he drew his
revolver, never expecting to escape alive, when two shots rang across
the wash as close together as if fired by the same hand. The bear sank
like a falling tree. Yet he rallied and again rushed for Bucks,
despite Scuffy's stout opposition and the yells from above, and
finally halted only when Bob Scott, jumping into the wash-out,
confronted him with a knife. There was an instant of apprehension,
broken by a third shot from Dancing's rifle across the gully, and the
bear crumpled lifeless almost at Scott's feet.

The scout turned to Bucks as he stood dazed by his narrow escape.
Stanley, above, shouted. And Bill Dancing, carrying his empty rifle,
and with his face bleeding from the briers, made his way down the
opposite side of the wash. Scuffy, mounting the body of his dead foe,
barked furiously.

The little dog was the real hero of the encounter. He had paid
his keep and earned his way as a member of the family and as a
bear-fighter. When Bucks picked up his rifle he told Scott of his
bad miss in the critical moment of the fight. Bob took the gun from
his hands and examined the sights good-naturedly. Bucks had
neglected to change the elevation after he had aimed at the deer
an hour earlier.

"Next time you shoot at a bear twenty feet away, don't leave your
sights set for two hundred yards," was all Scott said.




CHAPTER VIII


The bruises that Bucks nursed were tender for some days, and Scott
tried out some bear's grease for an ointment.

Scuffy, who had come out of the fight without a scratch, took on new
airs in camp, and returned evil for evil by bullying the two wounded
hounds who were too surprised by his aggressiveness to make an
effective defence.

Bucks, when he was alone with the dog and time dragged heavily, turned
for diversion to the only book in the camp, a well-thumbed copy of
"The Last of the Mohicans." He had brought it with him to read coming
out from Pittsburgh, and had thrown it into his bag when leaving
Medicine Bend. In camp it proved a treasure, even the troopers, when
they were idle, casting lots to get hold of it.

One day, when Bucks was absorbed in the romance, Bob Scott asked him
what he was reading. Bucks tried to give him some idea of the story.
Scott showed little apparent interest in the résumé, but he listened
respectfully while cleaning his rifle. He made no comment until Bucks
had done.

"What kind of Indians did you say those were," he asked, contracting
his brows as he did when a subject perplexed him, "Uncas and
Chingachgook?"

"Delawares, Bob. Know anything about Delaware Indians?"

Scott shook his head. "Never heard of Delawares in our country. I saw
a Pottawottamie Indian once, but never any Delawares. Is this story
about Uncas a true story?"

"As true as any story. Listen here." Bucks read aloud to him for a
while, his companion at intervals asking questions and approving or
criticising the Indian classic.

"If you could only read, Bob, you ought to read the whole book," said
Bucks regretfully, as he put the volume aside.

"I can read a little," returned Scott, to Bucks's surprise. "All
except the long words," added the scout modestly. "A man down at
Medicine Bend tried to sell me a pair of spectacles once. They had
gold rims, and he told me that a man with those spectacles could read
any kind of a book. He thought I was a greenhorn," said the scout.

"Where did you learn to read?"

"A Blackrobe taught me."

Bucks held out the book. "Then read this, Bob, sure."

Scott looked at the worn volume, but shook his head doubtfully. "Looks
like a pretty big book for me. But if you can find out whether it's
true, I might try it sometime."

Stanley, after a few days, started up the river with Scott and
Dancing, leaving his men in camp. Bucks, who was still too stiff to
ride, likewise remained to receive any messages that might come.

There was an abundance of water-fowl in the sloughs and ponds up and
down the river, and Bucks, the morning after Stanley's departure,
leaving the troopers lounging in camp, started out with a shot-gun to
look for ducks. He passed the first bend up-stream, and working his
way toward a small pond thickly fringed with alders, where he had
often seen teal and mallards, attempted to crawl within gunshot of
it.

He was working his way in this fashion toward the edge of the water
when he heard a clatter of wings and the next moment a flock of
mallards rushed in swift flight over his head. He impulsively threw up
his gun to fire but some instinct checked him. He was in a country of
dangerous enemies and the thought of bears still loomed large in his
mind. An instant's reflection convinced him that it was not his
movement that had frightened the ducks, and he was enough of a hunter
to look further than that for the cause. As caution seemed, from the
soreness of his legs and arms, plainly indicated, he lay still to
await developments.

Soon he heard a movement of trampling feet, and, seemingly, across the
pond from him. Bucks thought of buffaloes. His heart beat fast at the
thought of getting a shot at one until he reflected that he had no
rifle. The next instant his heart stopped beating. Not ten feet from
where he lay in the thick willows, an Indian carrying a rifle, and in
war-paint, stole noiselessly along toward the camp. No sooner had he
disappeared than a second brave followed, and while Bucks was
digesting this fright a third warrior, creeping in the same stealthy
manner and almost without a sound, passed the staring boy; the
appearance of a fourth and a fifth raised the hair on Bucks's head
till he was almost stunned with fright, but he had still to count
three more in the party, one more ferocious-looking than another,
before all had passed.

What to do was the question that forced itself on him. He feared the
Indians would attack the troopers in camp, and this he felt would be a
massacre, since the men, not suspecting danger, would be taken wholly
unawares. Should he fire his gun as a signal? It would probably bring
the Indians back upon him, but the thought of allowing the troopers to
be butchered was insupportable. His hammers were cocked and his
finger was on one trigger when he considered how useless the alarm
would be. The troopers knew that he had gone duck hunting. They would
expect to hear him shoot and would pay no attention to it. To rush out
after the Indians would only invite his instant death.

There seemed nothing he could do and a cold sweat of apprehension
broke over him. But if he fired his gun he might, at least, surprise
the Indians. The report of a gun in their rear would alarm them--since
they knew nothing of his presence or his duck hunting and might take
fright. Without more ado he fired both barrels one after the other,
careful only to shoot low into the willows, hoping the smoke would not
rise so quickly as to betray him before he could make a dash for a new
hiding-place.

His ruse worked and he ran at top speed for twenty yards before he
threw himself into a clump of cotton-woods close to the camp trail and
began to reload. While he was doing so a shout came from the direction
of the railroad bridge. Not until then did Bucks understand what the
Indians were after. But had he not understood, he would have known a
moment later when he heard a sharp exchange of shots toward the camp,
heard the dogs barking furiously, and saw the Indians, now on their
ponies, running the troopers' horses past him at a breakneck gallop.
The Indians yelled lustily at the success of their raid, the stampeded
horses dashed panic-stricken before them, and the braves shouted back
in derision at the vain efforts of the troopers to stop them with
useless bullets. Bucks's own impulse was to empty a charge of birdshot
into the last of the fleeing warriors, but this he knew might cost him
his life, and he resisted the temptation. When he was sure all were
past he ran toward the bluffs, and gaining a little eminence saw the
fleeing Indians, a dozen in all, making their way jubilantly up the
river. At the camp the discomfited cavalrymen were preparing for a
siege, and in their excitement almost shot Bucks as he hove in sight.

Bucks gave a good description of the marauders, and, following him up
to the pond, six of the troopers attempted some pursuit. This, to
unmounted men, was useless, as they well knew. Indeed, they used
caution not to come unawares on any friends of the escaping braves
that might have lingered behind.

Colonel Stanley returned in the morning to hear that his escort had
been unhorsed. Bob Scott grinned at the cavalrymen as they told the
story. He assured them that they had got off lightly, and that if
Bucks's signals had not alarmed the little war-party they might have
carried away scalps as well as horses.

"We shall be in luck if we don't hear more of those fellows," said he
to Bucks afterward. There was now manifestly nothing to do but to go
in, and later in the day a freight train was flagged and the whole
party, with Scuffy and the hounds, returned to Casement's camp. Scott
sent his dogs thence to the ranch in Medicine Bend, and at Bucks's
urgent request Scuffy was sent with them to await his own return to
head-quarters.




CHAPTER IX


The foray of the Indians at the Spider Water Bridge proved, as Bob
Scott had feared, only a forerunner of active hostilities. Casement
had already taken all necessary measures of defence. His construction
camp was moved steadily westward, though sometimes inside the picket
lines of troops, despite the warring Indians and the difficulties of
his situation. Alarms, however, were continual and the graders, many
of whom were old soldiers, worked at all times with their muskets
stacked on the dump beside them. In the construction camp Bucks saw
also many negroes, and at night the camp-fires of their quarters were
alive with the singing and dancing of the old plantation life in the
South.

While waiting for Stanley's inspection of the grading and track-laying,
Bucks relieved at times the camp operator, whose principal business
was the rushing of emphatic demands to Omaha for material and
supplies.

During other intervals Bucks found a chance to study the system that
underlay the seemingly hopeless confusion of the construction work.
The engineers moving far in advance had located the line, and
following these came the graders and bridge- and culvert-builders,
cutting through the hills, levelling the fills, and spanning the
streams and water-ways with trestles and wooden bridges, miles in
advance of the main army. Behind these came Casement's own big camp
with the tiemen, the track-layers, and the ballast gangs.

Every Eastern market was drawn upon for materials, and when these
reached Omaha, trains loaded with them were constantly pushed to the
front. The chief spiker of the rail gang, taking a fancy to Bucks,
invited him to go out with the rail-layers one day, and Bucks took a
temporary commission as spike-dropper.

To do this, he followed Dancing up the track past a long construction
train in which the men lived. The big box-cars contained sleeping-bunks,
and those men who preferred more air and seclusion had swung
sleeping-hammocks under the cars; others had spread their beds on top
of the cars. Climbing a little embankment, Bucks watched the sturdy,
broad-shouldered pioneers. A light car drawn by a single, galloping
horse was rushed to the extreme end of the laid rails. Before it had
fairly stopped, two men waiting on either side seized the end of a rail
with their trap and started forward. Ten more men, following in twos, at
a run, lifted the two rails clear of the car and dropped them in place on
the ties. The foreman instantly gauged them, the horse moved ahead, and
thirty spikers armed with heavy mauls drove the spikes furiously and
regularly, three strokes to the spike, into the new-laid ties. The
bolters followed with the fish-plates, and while Bucks looked the
railroad was made before his eyes.

The excitement of the scene was unforgettable. In less than sixty
seconds four rails had gone down. The moment a horse-car was emptied
it was dumped off one side of the track, and a loaded car with its
horse galloping to the front had passed it. The next instant the
"empty" was lifted back on the rails, and at the end of a sixty-foot
rope the horse, ridden by a hustling boy, was being urged back to
where the rails were transferred from the regular flat cars. The clang
of the heavy iron, the continuous ring of the spike mauls, the
shouting of the orders, the throwing of each empty horse-car from the
track to make way for a loaded one, these things were all new and
stimulating to Bucks. The chief spiker laughed when the young operator
told him how fine it was. He asked Bucks to look at his watch and time
the work. In half an hour Bucks looked at his watch again. In the
interval the gang had laid eight hundred feet of track.

"I don't see how you can work so fast," declared Bucks.

"Do you know how many times," demanded the spiker, "those sledges have
to swing? There are eighteen ties and thirty-six spikes to every rail,
three hundred and fifty-two rails to every mile, and eighteen hundred
miles from Omaha to San Francisco--those sledges will swing
sixty-eight million times before the rails are full-spiked--they have
to go fast."

The words were hardly out of the chief spiker's mouth when a cry of
alarm rang from the front. Bucks, looking eagerly, saw in the west a
cloud of dust. At the same time he saw the tie gang running in dozens
for their lives from the divide where they were working toward the
camp. The men beyond them on the grade had scrambled into the wagons,
dumped any ties they might contain helter-skelter to the ground, and
were clinging to the wagon boxes. In these, the drivers standing up,
lashed their horses with whip and line for life, and death, while
everywhere beside and behind them other men on foot were racing back
to safety.

New clouds of dust rose along the grade from the flying wagon wheels,
the horses tore madly on, and as the heavy wagons jolted over the
loose stones, the fugitives, yelling with excitement and alarm and
clinging to one another as they bounced up and down, looked anxiously
behind.

There was no uncertainty as to the cause of the panic. "Indians!" was
the cry everywhere. Every man in camp had dropped his working
implement and was moving somewhere on the double-quick. Every one, it
seemed to Bucks, was shouting and running. But above the confusion of
the surprise and the babel of voices, Bucks heard the sharp tones of
Jack Casement giving orders.

The old soldiers in the working gang needed no further discipline. The
timid and the skulkers scurried for the box-cars and the dugouts. On
the other hand, the soldiers ran for the dumps where the arms were
stacked, and seizing their muskets hurried back and, trained for the
emergency, fell into line under their foremen.

Casement, musket in hand, taking the largest company of men as they
formed in fours behind him, started forward at the double-quick,
yelling now for the moral effect, to protect the retreat of the
wagons. The men, scattering as they reached the edge of the camp,
dropped into every spot of shelter, and at the same moment Stanley,
mounted and alive with the vim and fire of the soldier, led a smaller
body of men rapidly back to guard the rear of the camp, deploying his
little force about the box-cars and flat cars as they hastened on. In
an instant the construction camp had become a fortress defended by a
thousand men.

It was none too soon. Stirring the yellow plain with the fury of a
whirlwind, a band of Sioux warriors rode the fleeing railroaders
furiously down. They appeared phantom-like out of every slip and
canyon, and rode full-panoplied from behind every hill. The horizon
that had shown five minutes before only the burning sunshine and the
dull glare of the alkali sinks, danced now with the flying ponies of
the Indians, and the hills echoed with ominous cries.

Without a word of warning, the few fleeing men who had been working
too far from camp to reach it in safety were mercilessly cut down.
Their comrades under arms, with an answering cry of defiance poured a
volley of cartridge balls into the thin, black circle that rode ever
closer and closer to the muzzles of the muskets. Jack Casement and his
brother Dan recklessly urged their men to the most advanced posts of
defence, and from behind scrapers, wagons, flat cars, and friendly
hillocks the railroad men poured a galling fire into their active
foe.

The Indians, seeking with unerring instinct the weakest point in the
defence, converged in hundreds upon the long string of box-cars that
made up the construction train at the rear of the camp, where Stanley,
extending his few men in a resolute skirmish line, endeavored to
prevent the savages from scalping the non-combatant cooks and burning
the sleeping-cars. Bucks saw, conspicuous in the attack, a slender
Sioux chief riding a strong-limbed, fleet pony with a coat of
burnished gold and as much filled with the fire of the fight as his
master was. Riding hither and thither and swinging a long, heavy
musket like a marshal's baton, the Sioux warrior, almost everywhere at
once, urged his men to the fighting, and the fate of the few white men
they were able to cut down or scalp before Stanley could cover the
line of box-cars seemed to add vigor to their onslaught.

Stanley himself, attacked by ten braves for every man he could muster
at that point with a gun, dashed up and down the old wagon roads along
the right of way, a conspicuous target for the Indians. His hat, in
the mêlée, had disappeared, and, swinging a heavy Colt's revolver,
which the Indians shrank from with a healthy instinct of danger, he
pressed back the hungry red line again and again, supported only by
such musketry fire as the men crouching under, within, and between the
box-cars could offer.

Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, but they closed in
constantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows,
succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose from
the circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. Stanley, wheeling like
a flash, gave chase to the incendiary. The Sioux rode for his life,
but his pony's pace was no match for the springing strides of
Stanley's American horse.

For an instant the attention of the whole fight in the rear of the
camp was drawn upon the rash brave and his pursuer. Bucks, with
straining eyes and beating heart, awaited the result. He saw Stanley
steadily closing the gap that separated him from his fleeing enemy.
Then the revolver was thrown suddenly upward and forward, and smoke
flashed from the muzzle. The echo of the report had hardly reached
Bucks's ears when the revolver, swung high again to balance the rhythm
of the horse's flight, was fired again, and a third time, at the
doomed man.

The Indian, bending forward on his horse, caught convulsively at his
mane, then rising high in his seat plunged head-foremost to the
ground, and his riderless horse fled on. His pursuer, wheeling, threw
himself flat in his saddle to escape the fire bent upon him from
behind as he rode back. At that moment Dan Casement and his men
hurried up on the double-quick. With him came Bucks, who had secured a
rifle and fallen in. Some men of the welcome reinforcement were set at
putting out the fire. Others strengthened Stanley's scattered skirmish
line.

Convinced by the determined front now opposed to him of the
impossibility of rushing the camp, the Sioux chief gave the signal to
retire.

As if the earth had opened to swallow them up, the warriors melted
away, and as suddenly as the plain had borne them into life it now
concealed their disappearance. In twenty minutes they had come and
gone as completely as if they had never been. But in that short
interval they had left death and consternation in their wake.




CHAPTER X


Stirred by the increasing boldness of the Indians, Stanley returned
with his party to Medicine Bend to take further measures for the
defence of the railroad men.

Bucks, when he reported to Baxter, the train despatcher, found new
orders waiting for him. He was directed to take charge of the station
at Goose Creek. The train did not leave till night, and Bucks took
advantage of the interval to go uptown to make some necessary
purchases of linen and clothing. On his way back to the station,
with his package under his arm, he saw, on the edge of the broad
sidewalk, Harvey Levake. Levake was standing near a wooden-Indian
cigar-store sign, looking directly at Bucks as the latter walked
toward him. The operator, nodding as he came up, asked Levake,
without parley, whether he would give him the money for the
express charges on the cartridges.

If Bucks had exploded a keg of powder on the sidewalk there could not
have been a greater change in the outlaw's manner. He stared at Bucks
with contempt enough to pierce the feelings of the wooden Indian
beside which he stood.

"What's that?" he demanded, throwing his head menacingly forward.

Bucks repeated his request, but so mildly that Levake took additional
umbrage at his diffidence.

"See here," he muttered in a voice beginning like a distant roll of
thunder and gathering force and volume as he continued, "don't insult
me."

Bucks ventured to urge that he intended no insult.

"Don't insult me!" bellowed Levake in violent tones.

Again Bucks attempted to protest. It was useless. Levake insisted with
increasing wrath upon hugging the insult to himself, while Bucks
struggled manfully to get it away from him. And as Levake's loud words
did not attract as much attention up and down the street as he sought,
he stamped about on the sidewalk. Bucks's efforts to pacify him made
matters momentarily worse.

Meantime a crowd such as Levake desired had gathered and Bucks found
himself a target for the outlaw's continued abuse, with nobody to take
his part. Moreover, the expressions on the faces about him now made
him realize his peril quite as much as anything in Levake's words. It
was becoming painfully evident that the onlookers were merely waiting
to see Levake shoot him down.

"No man in Medicine Bend can insult me and live," cried Levake,
winding up a tirade of abuse. "I'm known from one end of this street
to the other. Nobody can spread lies in it about me."

He drew and flourished a revolver as he spoke. None in the crowd
interfered with so much as a word. But even before the outlaw had
finished what he was saying, a man of medium size and easy manner
elbowed his way quietly through the circle of spectators, and, taking
Bucks by the arm, drew him back and faced Levake himself. It was Bob
Scott.

"What's all this about, Levake?" demanded Scott gently.

Levake had no alternative but to turn his wrath upon the Indian scout.
Yet those who knew him perceived that it was done without much stomach
for the job. Instead of growing momentarily greater the violence of
his abuse now grew steadily less, and the thunder in his tones rolled
further and further from the subject.

Half-turning to Bucks, Scott laid his hand on his arm again. "Excuse
me," said he, deliberately and quietly, "but you are wanted quick at
the station. They are waiting for you. Go right along, will you?"

Only too glad to get away and comprehending Scott's ruse, Bucks
exclaimed, "Why, of course, certainly," and stepping quickly into the
crowd walked away.

Turning again to Levake, Scott made no effort to check the torrent of
his words. In consequence, the gambler found himself embarrassed by
the prospect of talking himself out. This would not have been so bad
except that his circle of admirers would, when he stopped talking,
expect him to do something and he was now at a loss to decide just
what to do. To shoot down Bucks was rather a different matter from a
pistol duel with Scott.

None of the street loafers about the two men knew Scott, nor did any
of them know that Levake had a prudent respect for Scott's trigger. As
for Scott himself, a smile of contempt gradually covered his face as
he listened to Levake's outbreak. He only waited patiently for the
moment, which he knew must come, when Levake should cease talking.

"Your tongue, Levake," returned Scott at last, "is longer than a
coyote's. Why do you stand here and bellow about being insulted? What
is all this noise about, anyway? These fellows," a contemptuous nod
indicated the men standing around, "all know, if you don't. You've
been talking loud so you could get a crowd together and advertise
yourself by shooting an unarmed boy, haven't you?"

The desperado broke out in fresh denials and curses, but he feared
the ridicule of the Indian would bring the laughter of his admirers
down on him. Nor was he keen to try a pistol duel. He remembered too
well the attack he had once headed on an emigrant train that Scott was
guarding, and from which the outlaws with Levake had carried away some
unexpected and unwelcome bullets.

Scott, now taunting Levake openly, stepped directly in front of him.
But the latter waved him away. "I'll settle my differences with you
when I'm ready," he muttered. "If that fellow," he added, indicating
Bucks, who was making record time across the square, "behaves himself,
I'll let this go. If he doesn't, I'll fill him full of lead."

"When you do," retorted Scott, "remember just one thing--that I'm
going to fill you full, Levake. Don't forget that."

Scott stepped backward. The crowd parted to let him through and Levake
walked sullenly toward the cigar store.

Bucks wiped the perspiration from his forehead when he reached the
station and drew a long breath. He waited until Scott crossed the
square and joined him. The Indian only laughed when Bucks tried to
thank him. "It is nothing," he said, "you are getting experience. Only
don't tackle that man again till you give me notice beforehand."

The next morning Bucks installed himself at Goose Creek.

Goose Creek was a mere operating point and besides the rough wooden
station, with an attic sleeping-room for the operator, boasted only a
house for the section crew--six men taken care of by a China boy cook.
East of the station stood an old road ranch belonging to Leon
Sublette. For this, freight was at times unloaded and an Indian trail
to the south led through the sand-hills as far as the Arickaree
country. North of the river greater sand-hills stretched as far as the
eye could reach. The long, marshy stretches of the Nebraska River lost
themselves on the eastern and the western horizon and at times clouds
of wild fowl obscured the sun in their flight across the sky.

Dancing came down to the new station to complete the instalment of the
instruments and this broke for a day or two the loneliness of the new
surroundings. Indeed, there was hardly time to be lonely. The constant
round of interest attending the arrival of trains with their long
halts, visits from trappers living at the ranch who were always ready
to talk, and occasional calls from friendly Pawnees from the south,
together with abundance of time for hunting the geese and ducks, made
the days go.

But one early summer morning Bucks woke to an adventure not upon his
daily programme. He walked downstairs after dressing, and as he
stepped out on the platform the sand-hills touched by the rising sun
shone in the northwest like mountains of gold. Looking at them he saw
to his surprise they were covered with black objects that appeared to
be moving.

Indians were first in his mind, and in his alarm he ran all the way to
the section-house where the foreman, after a hasty study of the hills,
explained that the suspicious-looking objects were buffaloes.

This information only added to Bucks's excitement. The China boy cook,
Lee Ong, at the section-house appeared equally stirred at the
situation and, after running in and out of the kitchen with much
fluttering of cue and clattering of wooden shoes, promised Bucks a
buffalo steak for dinner if he would bring in a hindquarter.

By the time Bucks had finished breakfast the whole country to the
north was black with buffaloes. For hours they poured over the divide
to the delight of the astonished boy, and after a time he wired Baxter
at Medicine Bend that a herd of at least one million buffaloes was
crossing the railroad at Goose Creek. As the grave despatcher seemed
not greatly excited by this intelligence, Bucks followed up the story
at intervals with vivid details. A wag on the wire in Medicine Bend
played upon his enthusiasm by demanding frequent bulletins, even going
so far as to ask the names of the leading buffaloes in the herd. When
he had got all the laughs possible for the office out of the youthful
operator, he wired Bucks that if the herd should linger too long on
the right-of-way he must notify them that they would be held as
trespassers.

This message had hardly reached Goose Creek when the China boy came
running into the telegraph office. His eyes were staring, and his face
was greenish-white with fright. "Indians!" he exclaimed, running to
Bucks's side and dashing back again to the west window.

Bucks sprang to his feet. "Where?"

Lee Ong pointed to the northern sand-hills. Riding the broad slopes
that led toward the river, Bucks saw a long string of braves,
evidently a hunting party. The cook, beside himself with fear, ran out
of the station before Bucks could stop him.

"Hi there, Lee," cried the operator, running after him. "Where are the
section men?"

"Gone," cried Lee Ong, not ceasing to run, "all gone!" He pointed,
with the words, to the east.

"Tell them to bring the hand-car down here!"

"Too much gone," shouted Ong. "Omaha!"

"Lee! Stop! Where are you going?"

Lee stopped only long enough to throw his right arm and forefinger
with an excited gesture toward the west.

"San Francisco, San Francisco!" he cried.

"Why, Lee," exclaimed Bucks running after him, "hold on! You are
crazy! San Francisco is fifteen hundred miles from here." This
information did not visibly move Ong. "Indian no good," he cried,
pausing, but only long enough to wave both hands wildly toward the
sand-hills. "San Francisco good. No some more cook here. Indian come
too quick"--Ong with his active finger girdled the crown of his head
in a lightning-like imitation of a scalping knife--"psst! No good for
Ong!"

It would have seemed funny to Bucks if he had not been already
frightened himself. But if the section men had fled with the hand-car
it meant he would have to face the Indians. Lee Ong, running like mad,
was already out of hearing, and in any event Bucks had no wish to
imperil the poor China boy's scalp with his own.

He turned an anxious eye toward the sand-hills. Then realizing that on
the platform he was exposing himself needlessly, he hastened inside to
his key and called up Medicine Bend. It was only a moment, but it
seemed to the frightened operator a lifetime before the despatcher
answered. Bucks reported the Indians and asked if there were any
freight trains coming that he could make his escape on.

The despatcher answered that No. 11, the local freight, was then due
at Goose Creek and would pick him up and carry him to Julesburg if he
felt in danger. Bucks turned with relief to the east window and saw
down the valley the smoke of the freight already in sight. Never had a
freight train looked so good to his eyes as it did at that moment. He
hailed its appearance with a shout and looked apprehensively back
toward the sand-hills.

The activity in that direction was not reassuring. The Indians, too,
apparently had noticed the smoke of No. 11 trailing on the horizon. A
conference followed, illustrated by frequent pointing and violent
gesticulating to indicate the coming train. Then with a sudden
resolve the whole party rode rapidly out of the hills and down toward
the railroad.

Bucks's heart misgave him as he watched. But the cotton-woods growing
along the river hid the Indians from his eyes and he could not surmise
what they were doing. The information all went to the despatcher,
however, who, more experienced, scented serious mischief when Bucks's
bulletins now came in.

"Watch close," he wired. "It looks as if they were going to attack the
train."

The operator's anxiety rose with the intimation. He ran out of doors
and down the track, but he could neither hear nor see a thing except
the slow-moving train with the smoke puffing from the awkward,
diamond-stack locomotive moving peacefully toward the cotton-woods
that fringed the eastern shore of Goose Creek. The very silence seemed
ominous. Bucks knew the Indians were hidden somewhere in the
cotton-woods and felt that they could mean nothing but mischief. He
ran back to his key and reported.

"They will surely attack No. 11," he wired. "I will run across the
bridge and warn them."

"Where are the Indians?" demanded the despatcher.

"In the timber across the creek. I am starting."

"Don't be an idiot," returned the despatcher, with an expression of
Western force and brevity. "They will lift your hair before you get
half-way to the train. Stick to your key as long as you can. If they
start to cross the creek, leg it for the ranch. Do you get me?"

Bucks, considerably flurried, answered that he did, and the despatcher
with renewed emphasis reiterated his sharp inquiry. "Do you
understand, young fellow? If they start to cross the creek, leg it for
the ranch or you'll lose your hair."

Bucks strained his eyes looking for a sign of movement across the
bridge. The cotton-woods swayed gently in the light breeze, but
revealed nothing of what they hid.

The freight train continued to crawl lazily along, its crews quite
unconscious of any impending fate. Bucks, smothering with excitement
and apprehension, saw the engine round the curve that led to the
trestle approach of the bridge. Then the trees hid the train from his
sight.

"What are they doing?" demanded the despatcher, growing apprehensive
himself. An appalling crash from the woods electrified Bucks, and the
key rattled fast.

"They have wrecked the train," he wired without an instant's
hesitation. "I can hear the crash of cars falling from the trestle."

Before he could finish his message he heard also the screech of an
engine whistle. The next instant the locomotive dashed out of the
woods upon the bridge at full speed and with cries of disappointment
and rage the savages rode out to the very bank of the creek and into
the water after it. Bucks saw the sudden engine and thought at first
that the train had escaped. The next moment he knew it had not. The
engine was light: evidently it had passed in safety the trap laid for
its destruction, but the cars following had left the rails.

If confirmation of this conclusion had been needed, it came when he
ran out upon the platform as the engine approached. Bucks waved
vigorous signals at it, but the ponderous machine came faster instead
of slower as it neared the station, and, with Bucks vainly trying to
attract the attention of the engineman or fireman, the locomotive
thundered past at forty miles an hour.

He caught one glimpse through the tender gangway as the engine dashed
by and saw both men in the cab crouching in front of the furnace door
to escape the fancied bullets of the savages. Bucks shouted, but knew
he had been neither seen nor heard, and, as the engine raced into the
west, his best chance of escape from an unpleasant situation had
disappeared almost before he realized it.

Each detail was faithfully reported to the despatcher, who answered at
once.

"Relief train," he wired, "now making up with a hundred men. Hold on
as long as you can, but take no chances. What are they doing? Can you
see or hear them?"

"They are yelling so you could hear them a mile."

"Scout around a little," directed the despatcher, "but don't get
caught."

Bucks scouted around the room a little, but did not venture this time
farther than the windows. He was growing very nervous. And the
Indians, unrestrained in their triumph, displayed themselves
everywhere without concealment. Helpless to aid, Bucks was compelled
to stand and see a fleeing white man, the brakeman of the doomed
train, running for his life, cut down by the pursuers and scalped
before his eyes.

The horror and savagery of it sank deeply into the boy's heart and
only the realization of his utter inability to help kept him quiet.
Tears of fury coursed down his cheeks as he saw in the distance the
murdered man lying motionless on the sand beside the track, and with
shaking fingers he reported the death to Medicine Bend.

"The relief train has started," answered the despatcher, "with
Stanley, Scott, Sublette, Dancing, and a hundred men."

As the message came, Bucks heard shooting farther up the creek and
this continued at intervals for some moments. It was sickening to
hear, for it meant, Bucks surmised, that another trainman was being
murdered.

Meantime the Indians that he could see were smashing into the wrecked
merchandise cars and dragging the loot out upon the open prairie.
Hats, clothing, tobacco, provisions, camp supplies of every sort, and
musical instruments, millinery, boots, and blankets were among the
plunder. The wearing apparel was tumbled out of the broken cases and,
arrayed in whatever they could seize, the Indians paraded on their
horses up and down the east bank of the creek in fantastic show.

Some wore women's hats, some crinoline hoop-skirts over their
shoulders; others brandished boots and shirts, and one glistening
brave swung a banjo at arm's-length over his flying horse's head.
Another party of the despoilers discovered a shipment of silks and
satins. These they dragged in bolts from the packing-cases and, tying
one end of a bolt of silk to their ponies' tails, they raced,
yelling, in circles around the prairie with the parti-colored silks
streaming behind, the bolts bobbing and jerking along the ground like
rioting garlands of a crazy May-pole dance. And, having exhausted
their ingenuity and robed themselves in this wise in all manner of
plunder, they set fire to the wrecked train, singing and dancing in
high glee as the flames rose crackling above the trees.

Bucks, with clenched hands, watched and prayed for the arrival of the
speeding relief train. The moments passed with leaden feet and the
train had many miles to come. The despatcher continued his encouraging
messages, but did not cease his words of caution, and, as the wreckage
burned, Bucks perceived the Indians were riding in great numbers up
the creek. Too late he realized what it meant. They were looking for
the ford and were about to cross to his side.




CHAPTER XI


He lost no time in sending a final word to the despatcher before he
started for safety, and his call was sounding when he ran back to the
key.

"Stanley's train has passed Chimney Butte," said the despatcher. "Soon
be with you."

Words over the wire never sounded better to the frightened boy than
those words.

"The Indians are crossing the creek," Bucks answered. "Am off for the
ranch."

He closed the circuit and ran out on the platform. The warriors had
found the ford and the horses of the head braves were already leading
a file across. Bucks threw one hurried look at them; then, summoning
his strength for an endurance run, he started, with the station
building between him and the enemy, for the ranch.

He had hardly got under way when, as he reached higher ground, he saw
to his consternation a party of Indians in the bottom land between him
and safety.

He was cut off. Hoping that he had not been seen, he threw himself
flat on the ground and, turning about, crawled, behind a slight ridge
that afforded concealment, stealthily back toward the station. The
Indians up the creek had crossed, but were riding away from the
station and toward the ranch, evidently bent on attacking it next. The
flames from the burning train rose high above the creek. There seemed
no place to escape to and Bucks, creeping through the sedge grass, got
back to his key and called the despatcher.

"Cut off from the ranch by a second party of Indians. Will wait here
for the train--where is it?"

A moment passed before the answer came. "Less than ten miles from you.
Passed Driftwood Station at ten-forty."

Bucks looked at his clock. Driftwood was ten miles west. The hands
stood at ten-forty-eight. Surely, he concluded, they will be here by
eleven o'clock. Could he hold the station for twelve minutes? Even a
show of force he knew would halt the Indians for an interval.

He hastily pushed such packages of freight as lay in the store-room up
to the various windows, as slight barricades behind which he could
hide to shoot, and with much effort got the largest packing-case
against the platform door so they could not rush him from the creek
side. For the twentieth time he looked over his revolver, placed a
little store of cartridges behind each shelter, and peered again out
of the windows. To his horror he perceived that the two parties had
joined and were riding in a great half-circle down on the station.
Evidently the Indians were coming after him before they attacked the
ranch. He reported to the despatcher, and an answer came instantly.
"Stanley should be within five miles. How close are they?"

"Less than half a mile."

"Have you got a gun?"

Bucks wired, "Yes."

"Can you use it?"

"Expect I'll have to."

"Shoot the minute they get within range. Never mind whether you hit
anybody, bang away. What are they doing?"

Bucks ran around the room to look. "Closing in," he answered briefly.

"Can't you see the train?"

Bucks fixed his eyes upon the western horizon. He never had tried so
hard in his life to see anything. Yet the sunshine reflected no sign
of a friendly smoke.

"Nothing in sight," he answered; "I can't hold out much longer."

Hastily closing his key he ran to the south window. A dozen Indians,
beating the alder bushes as they advanced, doubtless suspecting that
he lay concealed in them, were now closest. He realized that by his
very audacity in returning to the building he had gained a few
precious moments. But the nearest Indians had already reached open
ground, two hundred yards away, and through their short, yelping cries
and their halting on the edge of the brake, he understood they were
debating how he had escaped and wondering whether he had gone back
into the station. He lay behind some sacks of flour watching his foes
closely. Greatly to his surprise, his panic had passed and he felt
collected. He realized that he was fighting for his life and meant to
sell it as dearly as possible. And he had resolved to shoot the
instant they started toward him.

From the table he heard the despatcher's call, but he no longer dared
answer it. The Indians, with a war-whoop, urged their ponies ahead and
a revolver shot rang from the station window. It was followed almost
instantly by a second and a third. The Indians ducked low on their
horses' necks and, wheeling, made for the willows. In the quick dash
for cover one horse stumbled and threw his rider. The animal bolted
and the Indian, springing to his feet, ran like a deer after his
companions, but he did not escape unscathed. Two shots followed him
from the station, and the Indian, falling with a bullet in his thigh,
dragged himself wounded into hiding.

A chorus of cries from far and near heralded the opening of the
encounter. Enraged by the repulse, a larger number of Indians riding
in opened fire on the station and Bucks found himself target for a
fusillade of bullets. But protected by his barricades he was only
fearful of a charge, for when the Indians should start to rush the
station he felt all would be over.

While he lay casting up his chances, and discharging his revolver at
intervals to make a showing, the fire of the Indians slackened. This,
Bucks felt, boded no good, and reckless of his store of cartridges he
continued to blaze away whenever he could see a bush moving.

It was at this moment that he heard the despatcher calling him, and a
message followed. "If you are alive, answer me."

Bucks ran to the key. The situation was hopeless. No train was in
sight as he pressed his fingers on the button for the last time.

"Stopped their first advance and wounded one. They are going to
charge----"

He heard a sharp chorus outside and, feeling what it meant, sent his
last word: "Good-by." From three sides of the open ground around the
building the Indians were riding down upon him. Firing as fast as he
could with any accuracy, he darted from window to window, reaching the
west window last. As he looked out he saw up the valley the smoke of
the approaching train and understood from the fury of his enemies that
they, too, had seen it. But the sight of the train now completely
unnerved him. To lose his life with help a few moments away was an
added bitterness, and he saw that the relief train would be too late
to save him.

He fired the last cartridge in his hot revolver at the circling braves
and, as he reloaded, the Indians ran up on the platform and threw
themselves against the door. Fiendish faces peered through the
window-panes and one Indian smashed a sash in with a war club.

Bucks realized that his reloading was useless. The cartridges were, in
fact, slipping through his fingers, when, dropping his revolver, he
drew Bob Scott's knife and backed up against the inner office door,
just as a warrior brandishing a hatchet sprang at him.




CHAPTER XII


Before Bucks had time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the
open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being
cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched
with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay,
determined not to be taken alive.

For an instant his mind worked clearly and with the rapidity of
lightning. His life swept before him as if he were a drowning man. In
that horrible moment he even heard his call clicking from the
despatcher. Of the two Indians confronting him, half-naked and shining
with war-paint, one appeared more ferocious than the other, and Bucks
only wondered which would attack first.

He had not long to wait. The first brave raised a war club to brain
him. As Bucks's straining eye followed the movement, the second Indian
struck the club down. Bucks understood nothing from the action. The
quick, guttural words that followed, the sharp dispute, the struggle
of the first savage to evade the second and brain the white boy in
spite of his antagonist--a lithe, active Indian of great strength who
held the enraged warrior back--all of this, Bucks, bewildered, could
understand nothing of. The utmost he could surmise was that the second
warrior, from his dress and manner of authority perhaps a chief, meant
to take him alive for torture. He watched the contest between the two
Indians until with force and threats the chief had driven the warrior
outside and turned again upon him.

It was then that Bucks, desperate, hurled himself knife in hand at the
chief to engage him in final combat. The Indian, though surprised, met
his onset skilfully and before Bucks could realize what had occurred
he had been disarmed and tossed like a child half-way across the
room.

Before he could move, the chief was standing over him. "Stop!" he
exclaimed, catching Bucks's arm in a grip of steel as the latter tried
to drag down his antagonist. "I am Iron Hand. Does a boy fight me?"
he demanded with contempt in every word. "See your knife." He pointed
to the floor. "When I was wounded by the Cheyennes you gave me
venison. You have forgotten; but the Sioux is not like the white
man--Iron Hand does not forget."

A fusillade of shots and a babel of yelling from outside interrupted
his words. The chief paid no attention to the uproar. "Your soldiers
are here. The building is on fire, but you are safe. I am Iron Hand."

So saying, and before Bucks could find his tongue, the chief strode to
the rear window, with one blow of his arm smashed out the whole sash,
and springing lightly through the crashing glass, disappeared.

Bucks, panting with confusion, sprang to his feet. Smoke already
poured in from the freight room, and the crackling of flames and the
sounds of the fighting outside reminded Bucks of Iron Hand's words. He
ran to the door.

The train had pulled up within a hundred feet of the station and the
railroad men in the coaches were pouring a fire upon the Indians,
under the cover of which scouts were unloading, down a hastily
improvised chute, their horses, together with those of such troopers
as had been gathered hurriedly.

Bucks ran back into the office and opening his wooden chest threw into
it what he could of his effects and tried to drag it from the burning
building out upon the platform. As he struggled with the unwieldy box,
two men ran up from the train toward him, staring at him as if he had
been a ghost. He recognized Stanley and Dancing.

"Are you hurt?" cried Stanley hastening to his side.

"No," exclaimed Bucks, his head still swimming, "but everything will
be burned."

"How in the name of God, boy, have you escaped?" demanded Stanley, as
he clenched Bucks's shoulder in his hand. Dancing seized the
cumbersome chest and dragged it out of danger. The Indians, jeering,
as they retreated, at the railroad men, made no attempt to continue
the attack, but rode away content with the destruction of the train
and the station.

Stanley, assured of Bucks's safety, though he wasted no time in
waiting for an explanation of it, directed the men to save what they
could out of the station--it was too late to save the building--and
hurried away to see to the unloading of the horses.

Bill Dancing succeeded in rescuing the telegraph instruments and with
Bucks's help he got the wires rigged upon a cracker-box outside where
the operator could report the story to the now desperate despatcher.
The scouts and troopers were already in the saddle and, leading the
way for the men, gave chase across the bottoms to the Indians.

Bob Scott, riding past Bucks reined up for a moment. "Got pretty warm
for you, Bucks--eh? How did you get through?"

Bucks jumped toward him. "Bob!" he exclaimed, grasping his arm. "It
was Iron Hand."

"Iron Hand!" echoed Bob, lifting his eyebrows. "Brulés, then. It will
be a long chase. What did he say?"

"Why, we talked pretty fast," stammered Bucks. "He spoke about the
venison but never said a blamed word about my fixing his arm."

Bob laughed as he struck his horse and galloped on to pass the news to
Stanley. A detail was left to clear the cotton-woods across the creek
and guard the railroad men against possible attack while clearing the
wreck. The body of the unfortunate brakeman was brought across the
bridge and laid in the baggage car and a tent was pitched to serve as
a temporary station for Bucks.

While this was being done, Bob Scott, who had ridden farthest up the
creek, appeared leading his horse and talking to a white man who was
walking beside him. He had found the conductor of the wrecked train,
Pat Francis, who, young though he was, had escaped the Indians long
enough to reach a cave in the creek bank and whose rifle shots Bucks
had heard, while Francis was holding the Sioux at bay during the
fight. The plucky conductor, who was covered with dust, was greeted
with acclamations.

"He claims," volunteered Scott, speaking to Stanley, "he could have
stood them off all day."

Francis's eyes fell regretfully on the dead brakeman. "If that boy had
minded what I said and come with me he would have been alive now."

The wrecking train, with a gang of men from Medicine Bend, arrived
late in the afternoon, and at supper-time a courier rode in from
Stanley's scouting party with despatches for General Park. Stanley
reported the chase futile. As Bob Scott had predicted, the Brulés had
burned the ranch and craftily scattered the moment they reached the
sand-hills. Instead of a single trail to follow, Stanley found fifty.
Only his determination to give the Indians a punishment that they
would remember held the pursuing party together, and three days
afterward he fought a battle with the wily raiders, surprised in a
canyon on the Frenchman River, which, though indecisive, gave Iron
Hand's band a wholesome respect for the stubborn engineer.

The train service under the attacks of the Indians thus repeated, fell
into serious demoralization, and an armed guard of regular soldiers
rode all trains for months after the Goose Creek attack. Bucks was
given a guard for his own lonely and exposed position in the person of
Bob Scott, the man of all men the young operator would have wished
for. And at intervals he read from his favorite novel to the scout,
who still questioned whether it was a true story.




CHAPTER XIII


With Bob Scott to lead an occasional hunting trip, Bucks found the
time go fast at Goose Creek and no excitement came again until later
in the summer.

Where Goose Creek breaks through the sand-hills the country is flat,
and, when swollen with spring rains, the stream itself has the force
and fury of a mountain river. Then summer comes; the rain clouds hang
no longer over the Black Hills, continuing sunshine parches the face
of the great plains, and the rushing and turbulent Goose Creek
ignominiously evaporates--either ascending to the skies in vapor or
burrowing obscurely under the sprawling sands that lie within its
course. Only stagnant pools and feeble rivulets running in widely
separated channels--hiding under osiers or lurking within shady
stretches of a friendly bank--remain to show where in April the noisy
Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek
bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a
child--a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the
creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of
the coyote and the wolf.

Yet there is treachery in the Goose even in its apparent repose, and
the unwary emigrant sometimes comes to grief upon its treacherous bed.
The sands of the Goose have swallowed up more than one heedless
buffalo, and the Indian knows them too well to trust them at all.

When the railroad bridge was put across the creek, the difficulties of
securing it were very considerable and Brodie, the chief engineer, was
in the end forced to rely upon temporary foundations. Trainmen and
engineers for months carried "slow" orders for Goose Creek bridge, and
Bucks grew weary with warnings from the despatchers to careless
enginemen about crossing it.

Among the worst offenders in running his engine too fast over Goose
Creek bridge was Dan Baggs, who, breathing fire through his bristling
red whiskers and flashing it from his watery blue eyes, feared nobody
but Indians, and obeyed reluctantly everybody connected with the
railroad. Moreover, he never hesitated to announce that when "they
didn't like the way he ran his engine they could get somebody else to
run it."

Baggs's great failing was that, while he often ran his train too fast,
he wasted so much time at stations that he was always late. And it was
said of him that the only instance in which he ever reached the end of
his division on time was the day he ran away from Iron Hand's band of
Sioux at Goose Creek--on that occasion he had made, without a doubt, a
record run.

But when, one hot afternoon in August, Baggs left Medicine Bend with a
light engine for Fort Park, where he was to pick up a train-load of
ties, he had no thought of making further pioneer railroad history.
His engine had been behaving so well that his usual charges of
inefficiency against it had not for a long time been registered with
the roundhouse foreman, and Dan Baggs, dreaming in the heat and
sunshine of nothing worse than losing his scalp to the Indians or
winning a fortune at cards--gambling was another of his failings--was
pounding lightly along over the rails when he reached, without heeding
it, Goose Creek bridge.

There were those who averred that after his experience with Iron Hand
he always ran faster across the forbidden bridge than anywhere else.
On this occasion Baggs bowled merrily along the trestle and was
getting toward the middle of the river when the pony trucks jumped the
rail and the drivers dropped on the ties. Dan Baggs yelled to his
fireman.

It was unnecessary. Delaroo, the fireman, a quiet but prudent fellow,
was already standing in the gangway prepared for an emergency. He
sprang, not a minute too soon, from the engine and lighted in the
sand. But Dan Baggs's fixed habit of being behind time chained him to
his seat an instant too long. The bulky engine, with its tremendous
impetus, shot from the trestle and plunged like a leviathan clear of
the bridge and down into the wet sand of the creek-bed.

The fireman scrambled to his feet and ran forward, expecting to find
his engineman hurt or killed. What was his surprise to behold Baggs,
uninjured, on his feet and releasing the safety-valve of his fallen
locomotive to prevent an explosion. The engine lay on its side. The
crash of the breaking timbers, followed by a deafening blast of
escaping steam, startled Bucks and, with Bob Scott, he ran out of the
station. As he saw the spectacle in the river, he caught his breath.
He lived to see other wrecks--some appalling ones--but this was his
first, and the shock of seeing Dan Baggs's engine lying prone in the
river, trumpeting forth a cloud of steam, instead of thundering across
the bridge as he normally saw it every day, was an extraordinary one.

Filled with alarm, he ran toward the bridge expecting that the worst
had happened to the engineman and fireman. But his amazement grew
rather than lessened when he saw Delaroo and Baggs running for their
lives toward him. He awaited them uneasily.

"What's the matter?" demanded Bucks, as Baggs, well in the lead, came
within hailing distance.

"Matter!" panted Baggs, not slackening his pace. "Matter! Look at my
engine! Indians!"

"Indians, your grandmother!" retorted Bob Scott mildly. "There's not
an Indian within forty miles--what's the matter with you?"

"They wrecked us, Bob," declared Baggs, pointing to his roaring
engine; "see for yourself, man. Them cotton-woods are full of Indians
right now."

"Full of rabbits!" snorted Bob Scott. "You wrecked yourself by running
too fast."

"Delaroo," demanded Dan Baggs, pointing dramatically at his taciturn
fireman, who had now overtaken him, "how fast was I running?"

Peter Delaroo, an Indian half-blood himself, returned a disconcerting
answer. "As fast as you could, I reckon." He understood at once that
Baggs had raised a false alarm to protect himself from blame for the
accident, and resented being called upon to support an absurd story.

Baggs stood his ground. "If you don't find an Indian has done this,"
he asserted, addressing Bob Scott with indignation, "you can have my
pay check."

"Yes," returned Bob, meditatively. "I reckon an Indian did it, but you
are the Indian."

"Come, stop your gabble, you boys!" blustered the doughty engineman,
speaking to everybody and with a show of authority. "Bucks, notify the
despatcher I'm in the river."

"Get back to your engine, then," said Scott. "Don't ask Bucks to send
in a false report. And afterward," suggested Scott, "you and I, Dan,
can go over and clean the Indians out of the cotton-woods."

Baggs took umbrage at the suggestion, and no amount of chaffing from
Scott disconcerted him, but after Bucks reported the catastrophe to
Medicine Bend the wires grew warm. Baxter was very angry. A crew was
got together at Medicine Bend, and a wrecking-train made up with a
gang of bridge and track men and despatched to the scene of the
disaster. The operating department was so ill equipped to cope with
any kind of a wreck that it was after midnight before the train got
under way.

The sun had hardly risen next morning, when Bob Scott, without any
words of explanation, ran into Bucks's room, woke him hurriedly, and,
bidding him dress quickly, ran out. It took only a minute for Bucks to
spring from his cot and get into his clothes and he hastened out of
doors to learn what the excitement was about. Scott was walking fast
down toward the bridge. Bucks joined him.

"What is it, Bob?" he asked hastily. "Indians?"

"Indians?" echoed Bob scornfully. "I guess not this time. I've heard
of Indians stealing pretty nearly everything on earth--but not this.
No Indian in this country, not even Turkey Leg, ever stole a
locomotive."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Dan Baggs's engine is gone."

Bucks's face turned blank with amazement. "Gone?" he echoed
incredulously. He looked at Scott with reproach. "You are joking
me."

"See if you can find it," returned Scott tersely.

As they hastened on, Bucks looked to the spot where the engine had
lain the night before. It was no longer there.

He was too stunned to ask further questions. The two strode along the
ties in silence. Eagerly Bucks ran to the creek bank and scanned more
closely the sandy bed. It was there that the wrecked engine and tender
had lain the night before. The sand showed no disturbance whatever. It
was as smooth as a table. But nothing was to be seen of the engine or
tender. These had disappeared as completely as if an Aladdin's slave,
at his master's bidding, had picked them from their resting place and
set them on top of some distant sand-hill.

"Bob," demanded Bucks, breathless, "what does it mean?"

"It means the company is out one brand-new locomotive."

"But what has happened?" asked Bucks, rubbing his eyes to make sure he
was not dreaming. "Where is the engine?"

Scott pointed to the spot where the engine had lain. "It is in that
quicksand," said he.

The engine, during the night, had, in fact, sunk completely into the
sand. No trace was left of it or of its tender. Not a wheel or cab
corner remained to explain; all had mysteriously and completely
disappeared.

"Great Heavens, Bob!" exclaimed Bucks. "How will they _ever_ get it
out?"

"The only way they'll ever get it out, I reckon, is by keeping Dan
Baggs digging there till he digs it out."

"Dan Baggs never could dig that out--how long would it take him?"

"About a hundred and seventy-five years."

As Scott spoke, the two heard footsteps behind them. Baggs and
Delaroo, who had slept at the section-house, were coming down the
track. "Baggs," said Scott ironically, as the sleepy-looking
engineman approached, "you were right about the Indians being in the
cotton-woods last night."

"I knew I was right," exclaimed Baggs, nodding rapidly and brusquely.
"Next time you'll take a railroad man's word, I guess. Where are
they?" he added, looking apprehensively around. "What have they
done?"

"They have stolen your engine," answered Scott calmly. He pointed to
the river bed. Baggs stared; then running along the bank he looked
up-stream and down and came back sputtering.

"Why--what--how--what in time! Where's the engine?"

"Indians," remarked Scott sententiously, looking wisely down upon the
sphinx-like quicksand. "Indians, Dan. They must have loaded the engine
on their ponies during the night--did you hear anything?" he demanded,
turning to Bucks. Bucks shook his head. "I thought I did," continued
Scott. "Thought I heard something--what's that?"

Baggs jumped. All were ready to be startled at anything--for even
Scott, in spite of his irony, had been as much astounded as any one at
the first sight of the empty bed of sand. It was enough to make any
one feel queerish. The noise they heard was the distant rumble of the
wrecking-train.

In the east the sun was bursting over the sand-hills into a clear sky.
Bucks ran to the station to report the train and the disappearance of
the engine. When he had done this he ran back to the bridge. The
wrecking-train had pulled up near at hand and the greater part of the
men, congregated in curious groups on the bridge, were talking
excitedly and watching several men down on the sand, who with spades
were digging vigorously about the spot which Baggs and Delaroo
indicated as the place where the engine had fallen. Others from time
to time joined them, as they scraped out wells and trenches in the
moist sand. These filled with water almost as rapidly as they were
opened.

Urged by their foreman, a dozen additional men joined the toilers.
They dug in lines and in circles, singly and in squads, broadening
their field of prospecting as the laughter and jeers of their
companions watching from the bridge spurred them to further toil. But
not the most diligent of their efforts brought to light a single
trace of the missing engine.

The wrecking crew was mystified. Many refused to believe the engine
had ever fallen off the bridge. But there was the broken track! They
could not escape the evidence of their eyes, even if they did scoff at
the united testimony of the two men that had been on the engine when
it leaped from the bridge and the two that had afterward seen it lying
in the sand.

The track and bridge men without more ado set to work to repair the
damage done the track and bridge. A volley of messages came from
head-quarters. At noon a special car, with Colonel Stanley and the
division heads arrived to investigate.

The digging was planned and directed on a larger scale and resumed
with renewed vigor. Sheet piling was attempted. Every expedient was
resorted to that Stanley's scientific training could suggest to bring
to light the buried treasure--for an engine in those days, and so far
from locomotive works, was very literally a treasure to the railroad
company. Stanley himself was greatly upset. He paced the ties above
where the men were digging, directing and encouraging them doggedly,
but very red in the face and contemplating the situation with
increasing vexation. He stuck persistently to the work till darkness
set in. Meantime, the track had been opened and the wrecking-train
crossed the bridge and took the passing track. The moon rose full over
the broad valley and the silent plains. Men still moved with lanterns
under the bridge. Bucks, after a hard day's work at the key, was
invited for supper to Stanley's car, where the foremen had assembled
to lay new plans for the morrow. But Bob Scott, when Bucks told him,
shook his head.

"They are wasting their work," he murmured. "The company is 'out.'
That engine is half-way to China by this time."

It might, at least, as well have been, as far as the railroad company
was concerned. The digging and sounding and scraping proved equally
useless. The men dug down almost as deep as the piling that supported
the bridge itself--it was in vain. In the morning the sun smiled at
their efforts and again at night the moon rose mysteriously upon them,
and in the distant sand-hills a thousand coyotes yelped a requiem for
the lost locomotive. But no human eye ever saw so much as a bolt of
the great machine again.




CHAPTER XIV


The loss of the engine at Goose Creek brought an unexpected relief to
Bucks. His good work in the emergency earned for him a promotion. He
was ordered to report to Medicine Bend for assignment, and within a
week a new man appeared at Goose Creek to relieve him.

There was little checking up to do. Less than thirty minutes gave
Bucks time to answer all of his successor's questions and pack his
trunk. He might have slept till morning and taken a passenger train to
Medicine Bend, but the prospect of getting away from Goose Creek at
once was too tempting to dismiss. A freight train of bridge timbers
pulled across the bridge just as Bucks was ready to start. Pat
Francis, the doughty conductor, who, single-handed, had held Iron
Hand's braves at bay, was in charge of the train. He offered Bucks a
bench and blanket in the caboose for the night, and promised to have
him in Medicine Bend in the morning; Bucks, nothing loath, accepted.
His trunk was slung aboard and the train pulled out for Medicine
Bend.

The night proved unseasonably cold. Francis built a blazing fire in
the caboose stove and afterward shared his hearty supper with his
guest. As the train thundered and rumbled slowly over the rough track,
the conductor, while Bucks stretched out on the cushions, entertained
him with stories of his experiences on the railroad frontier--not
suspecting that before morning he should furnish for his listener one
of the strangest of them.

Bucks curled up in his blanket late, but, in spite of unaccustomed
surroundings and the pitch and lurch of the caboose, which was hardly
less than the tossing of a ship in a gale, Bucks dozed while his
companion and the brakeman watched. The latter, a large, heavy fellow,
was a busy man, as the calls for brakes--and only hand-brakes were
then known--were continual. There were no other passengers, and except
for the frequent blasts of the engine whistle the night passed quietly
enough.

Bucks dreamed of fighting bears with Scuffy, and found himself
repeatedly rolling down precipitous mountains without landing
successfully anywhere. Then he quieted into a heavy, unbroken sleep
and found himself among the hills of Alleghany, hunting rabbits that
were constantly changing into antelope and escaping him. Fatigued with
his unceasing efforts, he woke.

A gray light, half dusk, revealed the outlines of the cab interior, as
he opened his eyes, and a thundering, rumbling sound that rang in his
ears and seemed everywhere about him cleared his mind and brought him
back to his situation.

It was cold, and he looked at the stove. The fire was out. On the
opposite side of the cab the brakeman lay on the cushions fast asleep.
Outside, the thundering noises came continuously from everywhere at
once. It did not occur to Bucks that the caboose was standing still.
It trembled and vibrated more or less, but he noticed there was no
longer any lurching and thought they had reached remarkably smooth
track. They were certainly not standing still, he assured himself, as
he rubbed his eyes to wake up. But perhaps they might be in the yards
at Medicine Bend, with other trains rolling past them.

Somewhat confused he raised the curtain of the window near him. The
sky was overcast and day was breaking. He rose higher on his elbow to
look more carefully. Everywhere that his eye could reach toward the
horizon the earth seemed in motion, rising and falling in great waves.
Was it an earthquake? He rubbed his eyes. It seemed as if everywhere
thousands of heads were tossing, and from this continual tossing and
trampling came the thunder and vibration. Moreover, the caboose was
not moving; of this he felt sure. Amazed, and only half-awake, he
concluded that the train must have left the track and dropped into a
river. The uncertainty of his vision was due, he now saw, to a storm
that had swept the plains. It was blowing, with a little snow, and in
the midst of the snow the mysterious waves were everywhere rising and
falling.

Bucks put the curtain completely aside. The sound of his feet striking
the floor aroused the conductor, who rose from his cushion with a
start. "I've been asleep," he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes. "Where are
we, Bucks?"

"That is what I am trying to figure out."

"Where is the brakeman?" demanded Francis. As he asked the question he
saw the big fellow asleep in the corner. Francis shook him roughly.
"That comes of depending on some one else," he muttered to Bucks. "I
went to sleep on his promise to watch for an hour--he knew I had been
up all last night and told me to take a nap. You see what happened.
The moment I went to sleep, he went to sleep," exclaimed Francis in
disgust. "Wake up!" he continued brusquely to the drowsy brakeman.
"Where are we? What have we stopped for? What's all this noise?"
Though he asked the questions fast, he expected no answer to any of
them from the confused trainman and waited for none. Instead, he threw
up a curtain and looked out. "Thunder and guns! Buffaloes!" he cried,
and seizing his lantern ran out of the caboose door and climbed the
roof-ladder. Bucks was fast upon his heels.

The freight train stood upon a wide plain and in the midst of
thousands of buffaloes travelling south. As far as their eyes could
reach in all directions, the astonished railroad men beheld a sea of
moving buffaloes. Without further delay Francis, followed by Bucks,
started along the running boards for the head end of the train.

The conductor found his train intact; but when he reached the head end
he could find neither engine, tender, nor crew. All had disappeared.
Running down the ladder of the head box-car, the conductor examined
the draw-bar for evidence of an accident. The coupling was apparently
uninjured but the tender and engine were gone. Francis, more upset
than Bucks had ever seen him, or ever afterward saw him, walked
moodily back to the caboose. What humiliated him more than the strange
predicament in which he found himself was that he had trusted to a
subordinate and gone to sleep in his caboose while on duty.

"Serves me right," he muttered, knitting his brows. "Brakeman," he
added sternly, "take your lantern and flags and get out behind. The
minute the buffaloes get across the track, go back two hundred yards
and protect us. I will watch the head end. While these buffaloes are
crossing they will be protection enough. Soon as it is daylight we
will find out where we are."

The snow continued falling and the buffaloes drifted south with the
storm, which was squally. Every moment, as the sky and landscape
lightened, Francis, whom Bucks had followed forward, expected to see
the last of the moving herd. But an hour passed and a second hour
without showing any gaps in the enormous fields. And the brighter the
daylight grew, the more buffaloes they could see.

Francis stormed at the situation, but he could do nothing. Finally,
and as hope was deserting him, he heard the distant tooting of an
engine whistle. It grew louder and louder until Bucks could hear the
ringing of a bell and the hissing of the open cylinder cocks of a
slow-moving locomotive. Gaps could now be discerned in the great herds
of buffaloes, and through the blowing snow the uncertain outlines of
the backing engine could dimly be seen. Francis angrily watched the
approaching engine, and, as soon as it had cleared the last of the
stumbling buffaloes on the track, he walked forward to meet it and
greeted the engineman roughly.

"What do you mean by setting my train out here on the main track in
the middle of the night?" he demanded ferociously, and those that knew
Pat Francis never wanted to add to his anger when it was aroused.

"Don't get excited," returned Dan Baggs calmly, for it was the
redoubtable Baggs who held the throttle. "I found I was getting short
of water. We are just coming to Blackwood Hill and I knew I could
never make Blackwood Siding with the train. So I uncoupled and ran to
the Blackwood tank for water. We are all right now. Couple us up. If I
hadn't got water, we should have been hung up here till we got another
engine."

"Even so," retorted Francis, "you needn't have been all night about
it."

"But when we started back there were about ten million buffaloes on
the track. If I had been heading into them with the cow-catcher I
shouldn't have been afraid. But I had to back into them, and if I had
crippled one it would have upset the tender."

"Back her up," commanded Francis curtly, "and pull us out of here."

Meantime there was much excitement at the despatchers' office in
Medicine Bend over the lost train. It had been reported out of White
Horse Station on time, and had not reported at Blackwood. For hours
the despatcher waited vainly for some word from the bridge timbers.
When the train reported at Blackwood Station, the message of Francis
explaining the cause of the tie-up seemed like a voice from the tombs.
But the strain was relieved and the train made fast time from
Blackwood in. About nine o'clock in the morning it whistled for the
Medicine Bend yards and a few moments later Bucks ran upstairs in the
station building to report for assignment.




CHAPTER XV


He found Baxter needing a man in the office, and Bucks was asked to
substitute until Collins, the despatcher who was ill, could take his
trick again. This brought Bucks where he was glad to be, directly
under Stanley's eye, but it brought also new responsibilities, and
opened his mind to the difficulties of operating a new and already
over-taxed line in the far West, where reliable men and available
equipment were constantly at a premium.

The problem of getting and keeping good men was the hardest that
confronted the operating department, and the demoralization of the
railroad men from the life in Medicine Bend grew steadily worse as the
new town attracted additional parasites. When Bucks, after his return,
took his first walk after supper up Front Street, he was not surprised
at this. Medicine Bend was more than ten times as noisy, and if it
were possible to add any vice to its viciousness this, too, it would
seem, had been done.

As was his custom, he walked to the extreme end of Front Street and
turning started back for the station, when he encountered Baxter, the
chief despatcher. Baxter saw Bucks first and spoke.

"I thought you were taking your sleep at this time," returned Bucks,
greeting him.

"So I should be," he replied, "but we are in trouble. Dan Baggs is to
take out the passenger train to-night, and no one can find him. He is
somewhere up here in one of these dives and has forgotten all about
his engine. It is enough to set a man crazy to have to run trains with
such cattle. Bucks, suppose you take one side of the street while I
take the other, and help me hunt him up."

"What shall we do?"

"Look in every door all the way down-street till we find him. If we
don't get the fellow on his engine, there will be no train out till
midnight. Say nothing to anybody and answer no questions; just find
him."

Baxter started down the right-hand side of the long street and Bucks
took the left-hand side. It was queer business for Bucks, and the
sights that met him at every turn were enough to startle one stouter
than he. He controlled his disgust and ignored the questions sometimes
hurled at him by drunken men and women, intent only on getting his eye
on the irresponsible Baggs.

Half-way down toward the square he reached a dance hall. The doors
were spread wide open and from within came a din of bad music,
singing, and noise of every kind.

Bucks entered the place with some trepidation. In the rear of the
large room was a raised platform extending the entire width of it. At
one end of the platform stood a piano which a man pounded incessantly
and fiercely. Other performers were singing and dancing to entertain a
motley and disorderly audience seated in a still more disorderly array
before them.

At the right of the room a long bar stretched from the street back as
far as the stage, and standing in front of this, boisterous groups of
men were smoking and drinking, or wrangling in tipsy fashion. The
opposite side of the big room was given over to gambling devices of
every sort, and this space was filled with men sitting about small
tables and others sitting and standing along one side of long tables,
at each of which one man was dealing cards, singly, out of a metal
case held in his hand. Other men clustered about revolving wheels
where, oblivious of everything going on around them, they watched with
feverish anxiety a ball thrown periodically into the disc by the man
operating the wheel.

Bucks walked slowly down the room the full length of the bar, scanning
each group of men as he passed. He crossed the room behind the chairs
where the audience of the singers and dancers sat. He noticed, when he
reached this, the difference in the faces he was scrutinizing. At the
gambling tables the men saw and heard nothing of what went on about
them. He walked patiently on his quest from group to group, unobserved
by those about him, but without catching a sight of the elusive
engineman. As he reached the end of the gambling-room, he hesitated
for a moment and had finished his quest when, drawn by curiosity, he
stopped for an instant to watch the scene about the roulette wheels.

Almost instantly he heard a sharp voice behind him. "What are you
doing here?"

Bucks, surprised, turned to find himself confronted by the black-bearded
passenger conductor, David Hawk. Baxter's admonition to say nothing
of what he was doing confused Bucks for an instant, and he stammered
some evasive answer.

Hawk, blunt and stern in word and manner, followed the evasion up
sharply: "Don't you know this is no place for you?" and before Bucks
could answer, Hawk had fixed him with his piercing eyes.

"You want to hang around a gambling-table, do you? You want to watch
how it is done and try it yourself sometime? You want to see how much
smarter you can play the game than these sheep-heads you are
watching?

"Don't talk to me," he exclaimed sternly as Bucks tried to explain.
"I've seen boys in these places before. I know where they end. If I
ever catch you in a gambling-den again I'll throw you neck and heels
into the river."

The words fell upon Bucks like a cloud-burst. Before he could return a
word or catch his breath Hawk strode away.

As Bucks stood collecting his wits, Baggs, the man for whom he was
looking, passed directly before his eyes. Bucks sprang forward, caught
Baggs by the arm, and led him toward the door, as he gave him Baxter's
message. Baggs, listening somewhat sheepishly, made no objection to
going down to take his train and walked through the front door with
Bucks out into the street.

As they did this, a red-faced man who was standing on the doorstep
seized Bucks's sleeve and attempted to jerk him across the sidewalk.
Bucks shook himself free and turned on his assailant. He needed no
introduction to the hard cheeks, one of which was split by a deep
scar. It was Perry, Rebstock's crony, whom Stanley had driven out of
Sellersville on the Spider Water.

"What are you doing around here interfering with my business?" he
demanded of Bucks harshly. "I've watched you spying around. The next
time I catch you trying to pull a customer out of my place, I'll knock
your head off."

Bucks eyed the bully with gathering wrath. He was already upset
mentally, and taken so suddenly and unawares lost his temper and his
caution. "If you do, it will be the last head you knock off in
Medicine Bend," he retorted. "When I find trainmen in your joint that
are needed on their runs, I'll pull them out every time. The safest
thing you can do is to keep quiet. If the railroad men ever get
started after you, you red-faced bully, they'll run you and your whole
tribe into the river again."

It was a foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, though
Bucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among the
railroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growing
in bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a revolver, when a
man who had been watching the scene unobserved stepped close enough
between him and Bucks to catch Perry's eye. It was Dave Hawk again.
What he had just heard had explained things to him and he stood now
grimly laughing at the enraged gambler.

"Good for the boy," he exclaimed. "Want to get strung up, do you,
Perry? Fire that gun just once and the vigilantes will have a rope
around your neck in five minutes."

Perry, though furious, realized the truth of what Hawk said. He poured
a torrent of abuse upon Bucks, but made no further effort to use his
gun. The dreaded word "vigilantes" had struck terror to the heart of a
man who had once been in their hands and escaped only by an accident.

"You know what he said is so, don't you?" laughed Hawk savagely.
"What? You don't?" he demanded, as Perry tried to face him down.
"You'll be lucky, when that time comes, if you don't get your heels
tangled up with a telegraph pole before you reach the river,"
concluded Hawk tauntingly.

"Let him keep away from me if he doesn't want trouble," snarled the
discomfited gambler, eying Bucks threateningly. But he was plainly
out-faced, and retreated, grumbling, toward the dance-hall steps.

Dan Baggs, at the first sign of hostilities, had fled. Bucks, afraid
of losing him, now followed, leaving Hawk still abusing the gambler,
but when he overtook the engineman he found he was going, as he had
promised, straight to the roundhouse.

It was almost time for the night trick. Bucks hastened upstairs to the
despatchers' office and reported to Baxter, who had returned ahead of
him and was elated at Bucks's success. Before the young substitute
took up his train-sheet, he told the chief despatcher of how strangely
the conductor, Dave Hawk, had talked to him.

"He has a reason for it," responded Baxter briefly.

"What reason?"

"There is as good a railroad man as ever lived," said Baxter,
referring to the black-bearded conductor. "He is the master of us all
in the handling of trains. He could be anything anybody is on this
line to-day that he might want to be but for one thing. If he hadn't
ruined his own life, Dave Hawk could be superintendent here. He knows
whereof he speaks, Bucks."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he is a gambler. Did you hear the shooting after I left
you?"

"No, what was it?"

"It must have been while you were in Perry's. Not five minutes after
we parted, a saloon-keeper shot a woman down right in front of me; I
was standing less than ten feet from her when she fell," said the
despatcher, recounting the incident. "But I was too late to protect
her; and I should probably have been shot myself if I had tried to."

"Was the brute arrested?"

"Arrested! Who arrests anybody in this town?"

"How long is this sort of thing going on?" asked Bucks, sitting down
and signing a transfer.

"How long!" echoed the despatcher, taking up his hat to go to his
room. "I don't know how long. But when their time comes--God help that
crowd up Front Street!"




CHAPTER XVI


Following Collins's return to duty, Bucks was assigned to a new
western station, Point of Rocks. It was in the mountains and where
Casement, now laying five and even six miles of track a day, had just
turned over a hundred and eighty miles to the operating department.
Bucks, the first operator ever sent to the lonely place afterward
famous in railroad story, put his trunk aboard a freight train the
next morning and started for his destination.

The ride through the mountains was an inspiration. A party of army
officers and their wives, preferring to take the day run for the
scenery, were bound for one of the mountain posts, Fort Bridger, and
they helped to make the long day journey in the cabin car, with its
frequent stops and its laborious engine-puffing over the mountain
grades, a pleasant one. The women made coffee on a cabin stove and
Bucks, the only other passenger, was invited to lunch with them.

When the train stopped at Point of Rocks and Bucks got off, the sun
was setting, and though the thin, clear air brought the distant
mountains very close, the prospect was not a cheerful one. In every
direction mountain ranges, some brown and others snow-capped, rose
upon the horizon. Where the railroad line made a tortuous way among
the barren buttes that dotted the uneven plain all about, there was
not a spear of grass nor a living thing except the stunted sage-brush
of the alkali plain. In the midst of this desert a great upheaval of
granite rock thrown squarely across the direct path of the railroad
opposed its straight course and made a long reverse curve necessary.
This was Point of Rocks.

"You," said Stanley once to Bucks, "may live to see this railroad
built across these mountains as it should be built. There will be no
sharp curves then, no heavy grades such as these our little engines
have to climb now. Great compound locomotives will pull trains of a
hundred cars up grades of less than one per cent and around two and
three degree curves. These high wooden bridges will all be replaced
by big rock and earth fills. Tunnels will pierce the heights that
cannot be scaled by easy grades, and electric power supplied by these
mountain streams themselves will take the place of steam made by coal
and hauled hundreds of miles to give us costly motive power. You may
live, Bucks, to see all of this; I shall not. When it comes, think of
me."

But there was no thought now in Bucks's mind of what the future might
bring to that forbidding desert. He saw only a rude station building,
just put up, and as the train disappeared, he dragged into this his
trunk and hand-bag, and in that act a new outpost of civilization was
established in the great West.

He called up Medicine Bend, reported, lighted a fire in the little
stove, and the spot in the desert known now to men as Point of Rocks
for the first time in the story of the world became a part of it--was
linked to the world itself.

But the place was lonely beyond words, and Bucks had a hard time to
keep it from being too much so for him. He walked at different times
over the country in every direction, and one night after a crudely
prepared supper he strolled out on the platform, desperate for
something to do. Desolation marked the landscape everywhere. He
wandered aimlessly across the track and seeing nothing better to
interest him began climbing Point of Rocks.

The higher he climbed the more absorbed he became. Youth and strength
lent ardor to the ascent, and Bucks, soon forgetting everything below,
was scaling the granite pile that towered above him. For thirty
minutes, without a halt, he continued to climb, and reaching after a
while what seemed the highest ledge of the rocky spur, he walked out
upon it to the very edge and was rewarded for his labor with a
magnificent panorama of the mountain divide.

In the west the sky was still golden and, though clouds appeared to be
banking heavily in the north, the view of the distant peaks was
unobstructed. From where he sat he could almost have thrown a stone
into one tiny mountain stream that cut a silver path toward the
setting sun, and another, a hundred yards away, that flowed gently
toward the rising sun. And he knew--for Bill Dancing had told
him--that the one rill emptied at last into the Pacific Ocean, and the
other into the Atlantic Ocean. Alongside these tiny streams he could
plainly trace the overland trail of the emigrant wagons, and, cutting
in straighter lines, but following the same general direction, lay the
right-of-way of the new transcontinental railroad.

Beyond, in every direction, stretched great plateaus, and above these
rugged mountain chains, lying in what seemed the eternal solitude of
the vast desert. He was alone with the sunset, and stood for some
moments silenced by the scene before him. When a sound did at length
reach his ear as he sat spellbound, it brought him back to himself
with the suddenness of a shock.

At first he heard only distant echoes of a short, muffled blow,
irregularly repeated and seeming familiar to the ear. As he speculated
upon what the sound might be, it grew gradually plainer and came
seemingly nearer. He bent his eyes down the valley to the west and
scanned the wagon-trail and the railroad track as far as he could in
the dusk, but could see nothing. Then the muffle of the sound was at
once lifted. It came from the other direction, and, turning his eyes,
he saw emerging from a small canyon that hid the trail to the east, a
covered emigrant wagon, drawn by a large team of horses and driven by
a man sitting in front of the hood, making its way slowly up the road
toward the station.

The heavy play of the wheel-hubs on the axles echoed now very plainly
upon his ears, and he sat watching the outfit and wondering whether
the travellers would camp for the night near him and give him what he
craved most of all, a little human society. The horses passed the
station, and as they did so, the driver peered intently at the new
building, looking back around the side of the canvas cover, and
straining his neck to see all he could see, while the horses moved
along.

This would have seemed to Bucks mere idle curiosity had he not noticed
that some one within the wagon parted the canvas flaps at the rear as
it went by and likewise inspected the building with close attention.
Even this was no especial incident for wonderment, nor was Bucks
surprised when the emigrants, after pursuing their way until they were
well out of sight of the station itself, guided their wagon from the
trail into a little depression along the creek as if to make camp for
the night. The driver, a tall, thin man, wearing a slouch hat, got
down from the front of the wagon and walked with a shambling gait to
the head of his horses and loosened their bridles. While the horses
were drinking, a second man, carrying a rifle, climbed down from the
rear of the wagon. He was of a shorter and stockier build, and on one
side the brim of his soft hat had been torn away so that it hung
loosely over one ear, the other ear being covered only by a shock of
dusty hair.

A third man emerged from under the canvas cover, dropping down

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